


The Corruption of the Sacrificial Lamb

by Eristastic



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - Medieval, Bondage, Minor Original Character(s), Other, Tournaments
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-09
Updated: 2016-08-27
Packaged: 2018-07-22 13:21:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 26,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7440790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eristastic/pseuds/Eristastic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A supremely self-indulgent 'winner of the tournament gets the prince's hand in marriage' kind of story, but somehow actual plot snuck in. </p><p>So Asriel - a prince whose best never feels like enough - has to deal with a tournament for his hand, a rising revolutionary group set on killing him, and a stranger he keeps running into.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. You’re Here, I’m Here, But Even That is Meaningless

**Author's Note:**

> To keep a long story short, this started as a joke and then I'd written 7 anachronic vignettes and I was sending them to a surprising amount of people separately. As stated in the description, it's very self-indulgent and there's a fair amount of smut, but I'll add relevant warnings in the chapter descriptions (some of them really need it).
> 
> 10 out of 11 are already written, but I might pace the uploading.
> 
> (For what it's worth, 'Faille' is pronounced 'fai')

It was a rare day that gave Asriel the time to escape from the main hold of the castle. Such days were growing increasingly uncommon as the tournament approached, so at the first opportunity he got, he ran.

The remedial lesson on foreign trade policies wasn’t vital, he reassured himself. It was something he was usually good at, and he had spent the entire past week with no free time at all, strung up in a flurry of preparations for the arrival of guests. There were too many people to meet and nurture favourable relations with; too much to prepare and approve, since the tournament would ultimately end in his marriage.

So, slipping through the lower halls of the castle, he ran.

It was easier-going once he was out of the castle proper and into the gardens behind it, but he didn’t stop there. It wasn’t freedom to kick his heels forlornly among manicured flower beds: he needed to go further, past the orchards, through brambles that caught on his fur and crushed blackberry juice on his clothes, until he was standing in the vast emptiness of uncultivated fields. There were thin paths cleared of wild grass running along the perimeter and he walked along them, caught between waist-high grass and head-high thickets. It wasn’t the most cautious stroll he could have taken, and that too was a stab of guilt. If his parents found out he’d been in the open and unguarded, given the current situation, they would never trust him with free time again. So he couldn’t get caught.

The air was fresh, the sky clear in a cloudless autumn afternoon, and all he could hear so far out from the city were the calls of crickets or small birds that hurtled from tree to hedge every so often. A buzzard circled overhead and he watched it, walking slowly while it swooped downwards to catch an unsuspecting rabbit or other small mammal. It disappeared from sight behind the thicket some way ahead of Asriel, and he followed it with his gaze, only stopped when his eyes caught on a figure in front of him.

They were staring at the castle, as still as if they’d been carved into place. They seemed tense; they were human, but taller and lankier than Asriel was used to seeing, no matter how their loose clothes tried to hide it. Dark hair hung messily from their scalp and glowed red at the edges where the sunlight caught it. They were too far away to work out their expression.

In a somewhat delayed reaction, Asriel realised that this encounter had the unfortunate side effect of ruining his attempts to stay inconspicuous. The fields were supposed to have been deserted for another year or so, until crop rotation decreed they be used again, and there weren’t any animals grazing in that particular one. He’d planned his route to the woods carefully, and yet now there was an intruder. There was no way to avoid them unless he wanted to hide in the grass, and he didn’t, not really.

Confrontation, then. He wasn’t exactly opposed to it, if they turned out to be pleasant and (more importantly) unlikely to be in a position to talk to his parents. He walked towards them as if he had nothing to hide.

When he was a few paces from them, they turned their head, their body still angled towards the castle. He wondered what was so interesting about it. Perhaps it was their first time at the capital. He didn’t spend much time thinking about it: the second he saw their eyes, he felt his mouth dry up. It wasn’t an area of expertise for him, but he was almost certain that red was not a common colour for human eyes. Striking wasn’t quite the right word: unsettling seemed closer, when they were framed by heavy eyebrows and deep discolouration like bruises underneath.

Asriel found himself saying, “Is something the matter?”

“No,” they said shortly. And then, like an afterthought, “Thank you.”

“If you’re wondering how to get to the castle, I can show you.”

They raised an eyebrow. “You work there?”

“Yeah,” he nodded before he could stop himself. What did a small lie matter? “Are you new here?”

They nodded briefly. Their stance hadn’t relaxed since he’d started talking to them, he noticed with a fierce bite of shame.

“Came with the others for the tournament?”

“Something like that.” They reached out to pluck a leaf from the hedge in front of them, rubbing it between their fingers. “Not that I have any intention of watching. The whole thing’s a farce.”

“Isn’t it, though?” he grinned. He shifted his weight, the leather of his conspicuously high quality boots creaking. “It’s the stupidest idea. I mean okay, a tournament is going to bring people together and it’s good for morale, but what’s that going to do for the groups who hate the monster monarchy? Nothing. It’s going to be interpreted as us flaunting our wealth and power.” He shrugged. “Why even bother?”

Facing him properly, they asked, “You’re not in favour of it either?”

“Not a chance,” he grimaced.

They smiled, and Asriel thought his heart might stop. It was uneven: one side was raised higher than the other, but their eyes crinkled up and their shoulders relaxed slightly from the stiffness that seemed their most arresting characteristic.

“Good,” they said. “It’s so stupid. Faille’s hardly going to give up just because the royal family have extended a finger to the rest of us. It’s ridiculous: they want a full coup, not a marriage that’ll just stabilise the existing monarchy.”

“Exactly,” Asriel nodded his head with an expression of despair. Everything they were saying was what he’d tried to explain to his parents and the council, but they hadn’t listened. He was beginning to think that his parents just wanted to marry him off, but that seemed an uncharitable way of thinking.

“And besides,” the stranger went on, now ripping a blade of grass to shreds, “why would anyone want to marry some stuck-up prince? The idea’s nauseating. It’s all lip-service: they’re not _actually_ going to give the champion the prince’s hand in marriage. Or if they do, they’re just going to be shoved away and kept out of the public eye. Couldn’t have a low-born knight ruling, could we?”

Asriel blinked. “That’s not going to happen. That’s…I’m sure the royal family has pure intentions about this, even if it _is_ a stupid idea.”

“Really?” They looked genuinely surprised. “That’s naïve of you. As if the king and queen are going to give away their only son to a stranger. As if the prince is going to let himself be given away,” they grinned nastily, turning their eyes back to the castle. “None of it’s pure. It’s a joke at the expense of people like us. But maybe you’ve been holed up in the castle too long to realise that. Take my word for it.”

They moved closer to him, raising a single finger to point straight at his nose, their other hand on a hip and their face angled up to meet his eyes. “None of it’s real. If you’ve been planning to sign up, don’t even bother. I bet a good half of the participants are going to be hand-selected toffs anyway. Better not to let the precious prince’s bed get dirtied by commoners, right?”

“That’s wrong,” he said, batting their hand away. They straightened up, an infuriating expression of pity on their face. He snarled again, “That’s _wrong_. That’s not what’s happening: it’s all honest. Or are you just bitter because you wanted to enter and you didn’t qualify?”

“It would be a _blessing_ not to qualify,” they sneered, but something about their mouth made it look forced.

“If you feel that strongly about it, just go back to whichever dead-end village you came from,” Asriel growled, turning away from them and storming off. It wasn’t prince-like, but nor was it prince-like to let some stranger stamp all over one’s pride. That wasn’t something he’d stand for, not when he was giving so much up just to follow his parents and the council’s wishes. He was giving up his chance to find a partner he loved – anyone he loved – and the absolute best he would let himself hope for was a companionable marriage that helped to drag the supports out from under Faille.

There was nothing more to it than that.

 

*

 

The next opportunity to run away came a few days later, worryingly close to the start of the tournament. Asriel paid it no mind: he just wanted to get away from the castle and its stifling ambiance of hurry and unending rows of people asking him for attention, agreement, everything.

Rather than deal with it as a prince should, he was weak and ran for the meadows. It was only an afternoon: two afternoons a week wasn’t much, was it? He wouldn’t ask for more than he was given, he just knew he needed this. He needed to walk and relax and pretend he wasn’t him, because being him meant a slew of problems he wasn’t sure he wanted to deal with for every hour of every day, without end. Without relief.

There was no one to talk to, and so he wouldn’t talk: he would just value the silence.

His plan splintered apart the moment he stepped into the meadow. There, among the low flowers, hidden by towering, untrimmed hedges, a familiar figure stood holding a sword and looking off into the distance, seemingly at nothing. They turned to see him before he could leave, and he couldn’t just turn away after that. It was the look of the thing. It was the fact that he hadn’t managed to stop playing their conversation over in his head since it had happened, and he wanted a satisfying conclusion.

It was also his afternoon off, so he didn’t try for civility. “Practicing?” he walked over to them. “And here I thought you would rather die than enter the tournament.”

“I would,” they said simply, sheathing the sword and tossing it at their feet. “You do realise people use swords for many other things than just competing in tournaments? I could name a few if you’re having trouble remembering.”

“Don’t bother.” He shouldn’t have risen to it, and in most circumstances he wouldn’t have. But he wanted to be with them, even if it was only to bicker. He found himself fascinated by how they moved, the sharp way they spoke, the way they had no idea who he was.

To be quite honest, the last one was the deciding factor.

Seemingly as stubborn as he was, they stared him down. A silence grew between them, cracked by sounds that had nothing to do with either of them, and Asriel found he had nothing to say. He didn’t want to be antagonistic with them. He wanted to ask them their name and find out what they were doing in the capital, where they worked, why they were out in a deserted field with a sword, but he had no way of getting to that point.

They looked at him for some time more, and then closed their eyes slowly and deliberately, looking away when they reopened them. “Are all monsters like you?” they asked disinterestedly.

“What?”

“Pitiably naïve, I mean, and just as pitiably feisty when they’re told they’re wrong.”

He scowled, but they didn’t turn around to appreciate it. “Of course not, and that’s also not what _I’m_ like. You’re only getting a biased impression because I disagree with you.”

“So you’re generally sweet and charming?” they grinned at him unpleasantly. “Somehow I find that hard to believe.”

He folded his arms, glaring at them. “Why are you even bringing this up again? That conversation was days ago. It doesn’t matter, does it?”

They blinked. Then they turned away, their voice strangely even as they nodded. “As you say.”

Their shoulders were stiff again; no smile, no matter how nasty, decorated their sallow face.

It shouldn’t have meant anything, but it did, and Asriel felt as if he’d ruined something. There was nothing to their relationship – that between a prince desperate for company and a complete stranger – and it didn’t matter at all. He had meetings to be in, fittings to stand for, lectures to suffer through. Three days before the tournament, he did not have the time to be here with someone who clearly hated everything he stood for. Someone he’d ruined everything with, like a child breaking a new toy.

In a barely-shaking voice, he said, “My name’s Ree. What’s yours?”

They looked at him properly, their lips parted. The wind picked up and they had to hold their hair back with a hand, pushing it behind an ear. Then they said, “Chara.”

 


	2. My Problematic Waste of an Existence

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't want to take credit for them, so I should mention that all the chapter titles are 'inspired' in some way by various Vocaloid songs I like (i.e. either the title or an emphatic line, usually twisted to sound nicer). I won't mention each one but I mean, feel free to ask.

It was unreasonably hot for autumn, but in a heavy way. The air hung like honey: thick and muggy with moisture, waiting to be cleansed by the rain clouds waiting above. A thunderstorm, if Asriel wasn’t being too optimistic. He hoped he wasn’t. He’d been hoping all day that the clouds would finally burst and bring an end to the first day of the tournament, but of course they hadn’t. The least they could do was have the decency to start the downpour now everything was over and he was in comfortable clothes, traipsing in the grounds behind the castle in an imitation of freedom.

Thunderstorms were fun, he thought. You could scream as loudly as you liked, and as long as no one was near you, it would blend beautifully into the crash and rumble of thunder. So, when he felt the first chilling drops of rain on his arms, he smiled and began to jog over to the fields, where surely no one would be. He couldn’t stay long, but thunderstorms also made for useful excuses and no one would ask any questions if he said he’d simply been caught out in it.

There was a skeletal copse of trees at the side of a field which seemed to be growing kale, from what he could see. He hurried through the rows of crenelated deep green leaves, making it to the trees just as the rain really started to pour. It was still mid-afternoon, but the sky was dark grey with clouds. He could see them like a blanket over the castle and city below him. Satisfied with the sight and his vantage point, he leant against a tree and settled back to watch the entertainment.

A few minutes in, just as the wind began to howl, he heard footsteps. He barely had the time to turn around before a human came leaping over the stone wall behind him, hurtling under the cover of trees.

Asriel blinked as they looked back the way they’d come, breathing heavily, and then turned to see him. They paused.

“Fancy meeting you here.”

“Yeah…” He wasn’t quite sure what to say as Chara seemingly relaxed, running fingers through their soaked hair. Overhead, there was a crack of thunder. He hadn’t seen the lightning preceding it.

Apparently there was nothing that needed to be said: they slumped to a nonchalant sitting position at the base of a tree, and he hesitantly followed their lead some way from them. The ground was damp, but not totally unpleasantly. Outside the cover of trees, rain fell in sheets, thunder ringing out every so often, punctuated with bright bursts of lightning far away from them. He entertained the idea of asking them why they were so far from the city, but it occurred to him that they’d just ask him the same question.

So they sat in relative silence, watching the rain.

Thunder split the sky open, but neither of them flinched. Asriel felt restless. He wanted to scream, at least a little. Something to let out the frustration, but he couldn’t very well do that with them there. Somewhat surprisingly, perhaps, he didn’t resent them for that. It was difficult to resent someone who looked so miserable.

“Do you want to talk about it?” he asked without looking at them, raising his voice to be heard above the rain.

“There’s no ‘it’. And no.”

“So there is an it.”

“There isn’t. I don’t want to talk regardless.”

He looked over at them that time, cocking his head to the side as innocently as possible. “Do you want to scream, then?”

“I’m sorry, what?”

Spreading his arms at the scene in front of him, he said, “We’re alone in a field with a storm. There’s no better opportunity to start screaming and getting rid of some stress. Hypothetical stress,” he corrected himself.

“Is that why you’re here?” they asked. Apparently this was funny, or at least gave them a sense of satisfaction, because they smiled crookedly.

“Maybe.”

“Life as a palace servant getting you down?” After a moment of thought, they said, “But no, monster courts don’t have servants, do they? So what are you?”

Asriel quickly ran through all the jobs he could think of that he might be able to fool Chara into thinking he had, and came up with nothing. So he said, in the same tone of voice they’d used, “What are _you_? What’s your apprenticeship?”

“You first.”

“No.”

They raised an eyebrow, or tried to, since they didn’t seem to have the muscle precision. “Then I suppose we can both go on not knowing, because I’m not going first.”

“Suits me.”

Nodding, they turned their head from him. For a second he wondered if that was it, if he’d ruined it all, but then they said, “So why do you want to scream?”

They weren’t looking at him and for some reason that made the difference. Weeks of frustrations and powerlessness were like beetles under his skin, and they were here, asking. They were someone he didn’t know at all, and who didn’t know him.

“I don’t feel like I’m enough.”

“Everyone feels like that,” they scoffed.

“No, I mean…I feel like everyone assumes I’m already at a certain level, but I’m not, and I can barely meet the minimum of their requirements. And it’s not as bad as it could be, because they support me and they don’t shout at me or punish me, but that doesn’t change the fact that I’m disappointing them.”

The rain fell; Chara said nothing.

“And,” he swallowed, “they smile at me, they’re kind to me, but I can see that they’re disappointed. I can see that they can’t understand why I’m not the way they need me to be. And I keep trying to please them, but I think that maybe I’m just not suited to what they want from me. I can’t…I can’t be what they want, and I don’t have the self-control to pretend.”

Drawing his legs up to his chest, he rested his chin on his hands. What was said, was said. Stupid to wonder if they’d be disgusted with how honest he’d been. Stupid to worry that they’d been joking when they’d asked.

Stupid.

“It’s probably not a bad thing to not have the self-control,” they said slowly, as if working out the words internally as they said them.

He made an inquisitive sound.

“Don’t you think it’d be worse to be moulded into what someone else wants, until you can’t remember who you are?”

Asriel looked at them. “I, uh…I don’t think that’s how apprenticeships are supposed to work.”

They let out a bark of laughter, raising a hand to cover their mouth. “No,” they shook their head, grinning at him. “No, they’re not. Quite right. Well, you only realise when it’s too late and you suddenly can’t recognise yourself, anyway. And then you’ll take anything to give yourself a sense of purpose and identity. Don’t you think?”

“I suppose.” He didn’t know how to relate to what they were saying, and it made him feel oddly selfish. If they were speaking about a thinly-veiled version of themself, as he was, then he could feel nothing but pity and shame that he’d even think to complain about his lot.

They seemed to notice. “Don’t look like that.”

He lifted his head. “Like what?”

“Like I just told you your parents died. You’re pouting. It doesn’t matter, you know. You’ve got your own problems, I’ve got mine. It doesn’t matter at all.”

“I think it does.”

“You’re not the brightest, though, are you?” They smiled in what looked like an attempt at cheering him up. “Don’t worry about it. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“No, you should have. I’m glad you did. It would have been weird if I’d been the only one to speak up like that.”

“True,” they nodded.

There was less thunder, he noticed distantly. The lightning was clearing up with it, and far in the distance, streams of light filtered through gaps in the clouds. He’d have to go back soon. It felt like nothing had been said, even if he’d told Chara things he hadn’t ever thought he would tell anyone.

In return, he wanted to tell them that they didn’t need to feel that way around him: he was just a stranger, so there was no need. They could create themself around him, if that was easier for them. Anything, as long as they didn’t need to feel as though they were only what others made them.

Before he could open his mouth, they got to their feet. “I’ll be missed if I stay any longer.”

“The rain hasn’t stopped,” he pointed out.

“Very observant. I still need to go. Have fun screaming when I’m gone.”

They left, drenched within seconds. Asriel shivered at the idea: skin might be easier to dry off than fur, but it still couldn’t be pleasant. He vaguely wished he’d set up another meeting with them, but it seemed to him that that would defeat the point, somehow.

They’d see each other again, or they wouldn’t, and that was all there was to it.


	3. Give Me the Me You Hold

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains mild sexual and significantly more suggestive content. It's also where the 'self-indulgent' part starts to come into its own, even if there is plot mixed in.
> 
> Now seems as good a time as any to specify that this Chara is AMAB, and also, since these are vignettes, a not-insignificant amount of time has passed between the second chapter and this one.

The heat was intolerable, and Asriel felt no guilt in running straight to the river after the day’s festivities were over. Or the competitions, at least: festivities would stretch long into the evening and through the night, as they always did. Tournaments were like that, he was coming to understand.

There were people he could have asked to bring him cold water for a bath, of course, or he could have done it himself, but nothing compared to the river, so he changed into clothes that wouldn’t give him away as the prince at a moment’s glance, and then he slipped out, giving the stands a wide berth. It was better to at least try for stealth.

The river was a fair distance into the woods from an awkward angle, and he hopped over fallen trunks, squeezing his way through gaps that had once been gaping, to get there. With any luck, he would be the only one: the meander he was going to wasn’t a particularly well-frequented one. So, batting away horseflies and midges and other small flying insects, he walked in the damp heat, wishing autumn would commit and come properly.

The sounds of someone else at the river stopped him in his tracks as he crested over a leaf-strewn hill, holding onto a branch for support. Just in front of him, the river awaited: cool, fast-moving, free of pond-skaters and other pests, with stones of varying sizes liberally scattered in it. It widened not far from him, the water becoming a froth of white around the glossy stones. He wanted so badly to rest there, but he wasn’t quite sure he wanted to do it with company. His eyes flicked to where he’d heard the sound.

Coming from behind a thick cluster of trunks, a familiar figure came into view, running a hand through their hair and – he noted even as his thoughts stuttered to a halt – stripped to the waist. Chara sat down heavily on the bank closest to them, letting the water wash over their feet.

Asriel walked out to join them.

At the sound of his footsteps, they looked up sharply, eyes wide and then filled with disinterest. “Ree,” they said in a voice that wasn’t entirely welcoming. It never was.

“Chara,” he nodded back, sitting a safe distance from them, such that if they both put their arms out they would have been able to hold hands, but no closer. And that would never happen anyway. Chara was bristly, their splintered remains of manners and delicacy always finding a way to stab him in their conversations. He didn’t mind much – he only hoped that they weren’t like that to others. He couldn’t imagine everyone was as tolerant as he was.

“Hot, isn’t it?” he said meaninglessly, pushing his feet out into the water.

“What an inane thing to say.”

“Can’t we at least try and do small talk before we turn to insults?”

“No.” They were trying to hide a smile, he noted with satisfaction. But it was annoying: he wouldn’t take that kind of talk from anyone else, and yet from them he hadn’t much choice. What choice was there, but to take everything they gave him greedily, reaching out for more?

A pathetically accurate image.

But it was harmless. It meant nothing: just brief respite from duty and responsibility. So he leaned back on his hands, staring up at the glimpses of sky through the trees above, enjoying the coolness of the air around the river. The water was icy cold. The fawn fabric of his trousers was already getting spattered with water, so he decided it wasn’t worth it to roll them up further.

“Why are you down here?” Chara asked.

“Weren’t you listening to the inane platitude from earlier? It’s hot.”

“Okay, thanks, but you work in the castle.” They were leaning back too, but they turned their head to look at him, their chin still tilted upwards. “Surely the thick stone walls do something for the heat.”

“They do: it’s like a graveyard in there sometimes. But I wanted to be by water. You?”

“Same, I suppose.” This, they said without much emotion. They turned their head back to the sky. “It gets tiring.”

“Your apprenticeship?”

“That too.”

He frowned, rolling his shoulders to ease the tension he could feel building up there. “What else?”

“Does it matter? The end result’s the same. It’d be nice to have just one day where things don’t happen. If everything could just _stop_.”

Asriel opened his mouth to say something neat and responsible, but he closed it when he realised he was going to sound like his mother. It wasn’t how he felt, anyway, and whether it was useless and unwanted or not, he didn’t want to lie to them. More than he was already doing, at any rate. He wouldn’t lie about the important things. Utter candour, because they simply didn’t care.

It was safe to put one’s heart in another’s hands if they didn’t know they were holding it, he thought. He was coming to think.

So he made an affirmative sound, letting his head hang back again. “I know the feeling.”

“Palace chores got you down?”

“Something like that.” He stayed purposefully vague, partly to see if they would rise to it.

They didn’t. “It’ll get better when the tournament’s over, you know. Once the champion’s crowned and our pretty little prince is married off, it’ll get better. You won’t have to worry anymore: things will settle down.”

“With Faille too?”

They paused. “It’s possible.”

“I don’t think so. More to the point, things are only going to get more complicated after the tournament: even ignoring the wedding and the rest of it,” he said with some disgust, “there’s a cornucopia of new decrees to be rolled out in the next year or so. A whole new set of legislations, mixing up tax rates and property laws and trade agreements. It’s all going to get stirred up, and who knows if it’s even going to work? It’s not like they’re heavy austerity measures or anything, but they might go wrong, and then where will we be? Just the generation that took a risk to bring the country together in an attempt to make things more equitable for humans and monsters, for the rich and poor, only to have it crumble in our faces.”

He sighed, trying to expel bitterness he’d been carrying for months with the worry that his parents’ plans wouldn’t work. “Whatever. Either way, even if it does all fail, we can’t go on the way we are now. I’m not blind enough to pretend we could.”

“Never said you were.”

They fell silent, the bubbling of water enough to carry conversation that wouldn’t flow by itself.

‘ _One day where things don’t happen._ ’

It was tempting. Now they’d planted the idea in his head, Asriel felt the desire for it like he was choking, desperate for air. Things never stopped. He was always struggling to run and catch up, and for what? To face a future he wasn’t even sure of. Faille might attack at any time: their intelligence on the group was limited, and their spies did have a habit of following promising leads only to lose them completely, like tracings in the sand that had been washed away by a sudden wave. And even if Faille did nothing (which was unlikely), there was the long-term to think about: how would an already fractious people take to revolutionary new measures, if not an actual revolution? He didn’t have the experience to tell. He didn’t have the instinct. He didn’t have anything to prove he was worthy of kingship: only years of learning, painstakingly sewn into his brain until he couldn’t forget it, but what was that worth, if there was no talent?

Nothing.

“You know a lot of interesting things, huh?”

He looked around. Chara was sitting up, one leg pulled to their chest with an arm resting on it casually, and they were looking at him. For a moment, he found himself floundering at the sight – the twin curves of their back and their chest, the slight softness of their stomach before it was hidden by cloth, the harsh angles of their hips and the dusting of dark hair running down from their navel, all lit up in dappled sunlight – but he found words eventually.

“What do you mean?”

They propped their head up with a hand, raising thick eyebrows. “Do all the servants in the castle know that much about future legislations?”

Again, he floundered. “Uh…not as such. I’m sort of in a position of trust, so…I get told things, and I overhear the rest.”

For a few moments longer, they kept him pinned in place with their eyes. And then, “Alright. If you say so. I still think you shouldn’t be telling every stranger those kinds of secrets.”

“You’re not a _strang_ -”

“After all, what would happen if I turned out to be in Faille?”

He almost laughed. He certainly couldn’t keep the smirk out of his voice when he said, “I sort of doubt you’d belong to anything like that.”

“Oh?”

“I mean, maybe you have the ideas,” and he knew only too well how those ideas could be twisted by Faille’s leaders, “but – and don’t take this the wrong way – I don’t feel like you’d ever care about anything enough to be part of a group like them.”

Chara blinked several times, an expression of adorable bewilderment on their face.

“Not to say you don’t care about things,” he clarified, “but caring about things and joining a revolutionary movement are rather different things. I, um, get the feeling that rather than do that, you’d dismiss it as pointless.”

A sickening moment of silence, and then they laughed. It wouldn’t have been a particularly pleasant sound from anyone else, but from them Asriel liked it. He was used to it, at least.

“Can’t say I think you’re wrong,” they grinned, getting to their feet. He wanted to pull them back down, but they were already stretching (the marked lack of muscle on their torso proving no impediment to Asriel’s appreciation of the view) and shaking their head as if to clear it.

They looked down at him. “I need to go. The way things are going, we’ll probably end up seeing each other soon enough. See you, Ree.”

“Wait!” He wasn’t ready to see them off so quickly, and he scrambled to his feet, jogging after them as they went back to the host of trees he’d seen them come out from before.

They clicked their tongue. “I _said_ , see you. What do you want?”

Everything, but nothing he could ask for. “More time?”

“Wait until tomorrow then.” They seemed to be rolling their eyes, but their back was to him so he couldn’t tell. “Just leave me alone: I’m going to get changed.”

He saw them bend over their sword – and he noted that it seemed much higher in quality than anything an apprentice needed, but he was too distracted to care – and his eyes scanned over to a cloth-wrapped bundle some way from them, at the foot of a towering beech tree. The shape was strange, oddly angular, and black metal poked out of one corner. He frowned.

“Chara, what’s-”

“Fuck.”

He blinked, and looked down at them. They were crouching, glaring at their finger. It took him a second to work out why, and then he was kneeling next to them, looking at the offending finger in what he hoped wasn’t a too-distraught way. Blood was so alarming: he was never going to get used to the way humans seemed to ooze with it.

“Oh gosh…did you cut yourself?”

“Clearly.” They scowled at the cut beading bright red along their index finger, tilting it so the blood dripped onto the ground.

“What do we need to do?” he asked, flustered. “Is it going to stop? Oh, wait, I’ve heard about this: don’t you have to suck it?”

“Well, I mean, you can, but this isn’t-” They stopped abruptly, which was a fairly understandable reaction to the (sadly) undeniable fact that Asriel had just panicked and held their hand by the wrist only to take their finger in his mouth.

Neither of them said anything, although that was only notable in Chara’s case, since Asriel’s mouth was otherwise occupied. He didn’t know what to do, or why he’d done it. He had not thought it would be the way it was. He had not thought it would be so damning. Seconds stretched on and they still didn’t say anything, their eyes widened in a state of permanent shock, and he became aware of taste: warmth, cloying, with sharpness running through it like the smell of copper in rain. With their wrist still held carefully in his hand, he sucked it.

It was quick: he ran his tongue down the length of their finger and pulled off slowly, desperately trying to ignore the thrum of heat rushing downwards in his body. He shuffled his thighs together, begging himself not to be obvious, praying that his trousers were loose enough.

It was futile in the end: he couldn’t keep a ragged whine from leaving his mouth along with their finger. It wasn’t the kind of sound that could be drowned out. It was utterly, shockingly incriminating.

He stared at the ground in disbelief. The weight of their hand was still in his, and they weren’t saying anything, but that was worse. They were going to hate him.

He would hate himself, in this position.

He was almost sure he did hate himself. How could he be such an idiot? It was no surprise to him that he wanted them – he would have needed to be a special kind of dense to ignore the recurring fantasies – but he had sworn to keep it under control. This should have been unthinkable. How was one supposed to come back from something like this?

Dropping their hand, he spluttered an apology and braved a look at them, already getting to his feet so he could run away. The sight of them made him stop dead, his thighs locked in a position halfway between sitting and standing. They were still staring at him, their mouth a thin line, but there was a flush to their cheeks and something fluttering in their throat. One unforgivable glance downwards confirmed that they were in the same state he was. The discovery sent something pulsing through his body and he knew he had to leave.

“You should go,” Chara said, quietly. Completely under control.

He could only trust himself to nod and run, blind to where he was going and uncaring as long as it got him alone.


	4. Close Your Eyes, Sigh, and Give In

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains mild sexual content, more so than the last one. It was also the first one I wrote, so the atmosphere might be a bit different.

There was something very nearly decadent about being so close to Chara without repercussion. A neat excuse gave him leave to be here without guilt: he was helping them practice, so there was no need to feel guilty about his budding feelings for someone not even in the tournament (except they weren’t budding: they’d sprouted and bloomed long ago). There was no need to pretend he didn’t like them for the carefully woven façade they both hid behind to protect their dignities. There was no need, because he was here for a reason.

He was also blindfolded and bound and he couldn’t say that didn’t help.

The ropes were barely tied: they caressed rather than bit into his wrists. He held himself straight all the same, nerves dancing with his pounding heart. They were standing right in front of him: he knew that. The arrows had stopped thudding around him a while ago and they had called an end to it, moving towards him. But they didn’t move or speak now: all he could hear was their breath on the wind and the distant noises of a city in revelry.

Just the two of them.

The mud was cool under his knees; the target was rough against his back. Unable to take it, he lifted his head to where he thought they were. “Are you finished?”

“I think so.”

“What kind of practice was this, anyway?” he laughed nervously. “I don’t believe that you need to do this kind of thing for hunting.”

“No,” they agreed. They sounded distracted, and he was struck by the urge to bring them back to him.

“You’re good, though,” he said with a feigned air of reluctance. He wanted to bathe them in praise, not keep it from them. “You’re really good.”

“I wouldn’t have shot at you if I wasn’t good.” They still sounded not totally there.

“No, I guess not. But still…if you’re this good, you should have thought about entering the tournament.”

“Because you want me to marry the prince?” Emotionlessly.

It took him a moment to understand, and then he blurted out, “No, of course not!”

It was stupid: he was his own imagined rival, and he still managed to feel jealousy claw at his throat.

“Well then,” they smirked. He could hear the satisfaction in their voice, but it was still unfocussed. “I don’t want to want to marry him either.”

“W-why not?”

“Why would I need a prince?”

There was something in their tone that promised elaboration, but it never came. There was only silence to separate them, and Asriel could feel words piling up on his lips to fill it. His mouth was open, slightly, in anticipation: cool air was drying his tongue.

After imagining a handful of possibilities, it seemed to him that there was nothing to be said.

His legs were numb, a breeze ran through his fur, his thighs were trembling with the strain of leaning up towards Chara, and he felt sculpted in place. For them, he would be. If it pleased them, if it kept them with him, he would be whatever they wanted.

They gave him no indication of what that was. They weren’t even speaking to him. Was that normal? Hadn’t it been too long? Surely one of them should have talked by now.

A sudden sound: their bow falling to the grass. It made him flinch, and then freeze as he felt the ghostlike warmth of another body just far enough away from his to say they weren’t touching. Fingers just short of his cheek. The absurd need to nuzzle into them came across him, and he tossed it away with difficulty: that wasn’t what a prince did.

Except he wasn’t a prince here, was he? He was their servant.

The touch of their breath on his fringe; the almost violent shuddering of his muscles as he fought against the need to angle up towards them. It was too much: they were too close. He could feel a week and more’s worth of dreams and fantasies flood to him, and before he could do anything about it, he could feel himself hardening.

This wasn’t supposed to have happened.

He prayed they couldn’t see, but he’d heard the hitch in their breathing. So of course they had. Shame, hot and all too willing to torment him, came like fire in his veins. But there was lust too, and the inexplicable desire to bend to their will and do as they asked him to, regardless of shame.

The back of their hand brushed his cheek. Fingers fluttered against the fur, tracing invisible lines that burnt with the imprint of their touch. A palm cupped his jaw and he leaned into it.

They weren’t breathing, he realised distantly. _He_ couldn’t stop. His breath was chipped with effort: the closest he could get to a moan while retaining plausible deniability.

He ruined it by kissing their hand when they brought it to his lips.

No further than that: it was only a kiss, without any of the idiocy he’d indulged in before, that afternoon by the river, but it sent heat pulsing to every part of him, leaving him ragged with need. He needed them, forever. Fuck the tournament, fuck fairness: he wanted _them_.

They pulled their hand back and it made him want to cry or cry out, one of the two.

A moment passed. Then, in a voice that was decidedly huskier than usual, they said, “I didn’t know goats were so weak to fingers. You’re going to make a habit of this.”

“You’re the one who hasn’t untied me yet,” he said with some difficulty. Even thought was difficult.

“I haven’t, have I?” They didn't move.

It took a long minute more before they bent to untie the ropes he could have ripped like ribbons, and when the blindfold came off, the light was too blinding to see. They waited for him to stand up, and when he looked down at them – painfully aware of the aching need he felt for them – it was as if he had never seen them properly before. Tiny and fragile compared to him, yes, but beyond that: beyond that there was strength. The way they held themself, the stiffness of the jaw, the darkness of their eyes. There was strength and the unforgiving signs of repression.

He didn’t want them to repress anything around him: he wanted to open them up and take it all, with their blessing.

Stupid, really.

They left him with a sneer, as usual, but it felt half-hearted. Their eyes lingered on him a touch too long, and they walked with too much haste to be called natural. Once they’d left the clearing, he fell to his knees, dropping his forehead to the ground and whining lowly. With visions of all the different ways that moment could have gone, before they’d taken their hand away, he gave himself release.


	5. All I Need Are Things I Like

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains mild sexual content and a lot of sad goat boy

Asriel woke in a cold sweat and it didn’t take him long to realise that that was far from the worst of it.

It was humiliating at best and horrifying at worst; remembering the dream that lingered at the forefront of his mind sent a shiver jittering down his back. An experienced mouth, a supple, pliant body, a voice that bore no disobedience, and fearless red eyes.

Everything he wasn’t allowed.

It took him close to half an hour before he was ready to get dressed, and by that time he was extremely grateful for the basin of water left for reasons hopefully unrelated to his actual use of it. Feeling drained and unwilling to move at all, he dressed himself slowly, and was just getting to his boots when there was a knock at the door and he was ushered off to eat with his parents.

There was too much to do, and he was strung along through it all with a constant procession of stewards and officials, leading him through the motions of nascent kingship in the hopes that it might become second nature. He doubted it.

Countless deeds to be looked over, countless ambassadors and representatives to meet and deal with, countless mistakes that his mother or father or attendant helpfully corrected, and he was exhausted by midday. It wasn’t an unusual state of affairs. He had long ago learnt how to smile and nod as if he could take anything in his stride, no matter the frustration and irritation that boiled beneath the surface.

Except that that wasn’t quite the case anymore. It was not irritation that singed his edges, but rather longing.

He couldn’t stop thinking about Chara.

They had begun to occupy his thoughts ever since he’d met them, but the misguided and deeply regrettable business with the arrows (that he would never admit he did not actually regret) had been a point of no return, it felt to him. There was no bridge back to a life without them – their snippy remarks, their snide conversation, the odd situations Asriel kept meeting them in – and he thought he might have burnt it if one had existed. What need did he have for that kind of life? None at all.

The sense of giddy freedom he felt around them was far preferable to staying demurely in the prince’s box, watching helmeted knights fight for his hand. The lightness in his chest at how easy their conversations had become, how natural to see their smile, was only another star in the constellation of who they were to him. But there was no need to be sappy about it. There was no future, anyway: he had to stop dreaming and bring himself back to the reality that awaited him less and less patiently.

The tournament reminded him of that, every day.

In the afternoon, he was escorted to his box under cover of veils and curtains, as if his appearance was really something that needed to be kept secret. He didn’t see the point in it, and he hated it. He hated the thin veil in front of his seat, woven especially to ensure he could see out tolerably well onto the field beneath him, but no one could see in. And there was nothing to do. He could only sit on an ornamented faux-throne, waiting while squires scuttled around the knights getting ready to ride the field.

And then the passes began, and Asriel stopped paying attention.

It wasn’t interesting to him. He didn’t enjoy jousting, whether watching or taking part. It felt like an artificial kind of sport with no real substance to it, as spear ends broke on shields and horses cantered by the tilt bedecked in coloured flags. There were so many better things to be doing: he should be looking over the trade agreements with the local gentry again. He knew he needed more time to puzzle over that. But instead he was here, sitting impotently in a tiny box, shielded from the rest of the world while knights competed. For him.

Childishly, he wanted to see Chara.

They were rarely around when he went out of his way to look for them, but he wanted to slip out and try anyway. He didn’t want to be sitting here, in a situation so choked with hatefulness that he could barely breathe. He wanted them. He wanted to talk to them, casually mention the tournament and have them criticise it brutally so he could join in. It was stupid, really: Faille and the other revolutionary groups were hardly going to be beaten down by a single tournament and the subsequent marriage. It was pointless. He was going through this for nothing. He was losing so much, for nothing.

Sighs didn’t seem to quite cut it, but he sighed anyway. He had to stop thinking about them, no matter how they monopolised his thoughts. He had to let it go, this undefinable affair they had. The longer he latched onto it for, the more it would hurt later, but he found, repeatedly, that he couldn’t let go. It was going to end in heartbreak, and he would take it with a smile, because that was what a prince did. The future was inevitable and he had to keep reminding himself of that, because dreamlike fantasies had a way of taking his hand and pulling him away from his responsibilities. Chara had a way of doing that.

His chest grew tight, and he forced himself to concentrate on the jousting knights, but it was difficult.

He could only hope that the eventual rift would be gentler on Chara than on him.

Cheering outside caught his attention and he looked up to see the next knight ride in from the pavilions. The Buttercup Knight, of course: who else would the crowds be so on edge for? Ridiculous name or not, they were the clear champion, and the air of mystery they carried around them like a cloak was just enough to make people love them. Who didn’t love a mystery?

Asriel thought he might be sick, or perhaps scream. But he couldn’t think like that.

They lined up beside the tilt, letting a monster squire give the last attentions to their horse and armour while their opponent waved half-heartedly at the crowd. It was almost pathetic to watch. He didn’t stand a chance.

Asriel turned his head back to the Buttercup Knight, wondering idly (yet again) why they ever thought the name would be fitting. A glossy black horse, similarly dark armour, no highlights of colour that might hint at a lover’s favour – though why would anyone with a lover enter this particular tournament? Nothing yellow at all. They did hold themself well, though, he would admit. They never took their helmet off, as if they were fully aware of the effect it stirred up among the spectators, and their back was straight, their form excellent. They knew how to ride, if nothing else, and there was a great deal else. That was the problem.

Slumping in his seat with no one to correct his posture, Asriel watched them as they squared up for a pass. They won, of course. Seemingly without effort. The next one, and the third, were won as well. He wondered if the knight had even broken a sweat. As their horse trotted back to the starting line, he decided it was unlikely. They were too powerful for that. Too skilled: their movements were always small, the energy exerted minimal, and everything was in the technique, for them. He couldn’t wait to see how they’d fare if they had to demonstrate prowess with a sword. Spitefully, he hoped it was badly, though he knew that was almost certainly not the case. It was so unfair.

Like a constant thorn in his side, they did deserve their position as the favourite to win. They were…there was something about them, he noticed again as he followed their movements with his eyes disinterestedly. Their short, economic movements. The brief hints of lenience when they stroked their horse’s neck or stretched, as if they were allowing glimpses past their mask of shining armour. They were…virile. Very much so.

There was something to the mystery, perhaps.

Arousal and guilt came upon him in equal measure, like open wounds and salt to grind in them. It was unthinkable, unconscionable, and yet he couldn’t deny it: his body would give him away at the briefest of glances. It was just the remnants from the morning: just the lingering phantoms of the dream triggered by a similar body to the one he wanted, but it was still happening. He was still losing his composure over someone else, his pulse heightened, his nose flushing with blood, his thoughts caught like a rabbit in a snare. They weren’t what he wanted, but they were close enough to remind him of what it was he _did_ want, and he could feel his breath growing heavy on his tongue as he remembered.

Their voice, the ghosting of their fingers over his fur, the rock-solid surety he had that they would not kill him. And the thrill, of being in their hands for them to do with as they liked. They had been affected too, he was certain, but it wasn’t enough: it was as satisfying as drinking from a hole-ridden goblet. He needed more, he needed release, he needed _them_ , he needed…

The thoughts, swirling like polluted water in his mind, sent blood throbbing through him until it was almost painful, and he had to bite into his hand, forcing himself to stay quiet, to not move, to not touch.

He wasn’t allowed to entertain the fantasy, because he wasn’t allowed to have them.

That much was clear to him, and he wanted to cry.


	6. Liar Dance

It was with resignation that Asriel let people dress him for the masquerade.

He could do it by himself, of course. He resented the implication that he couldn’t. But a ball was a ball, even when it was a masquerade, and so he had several monsters fluttering around him, helping him into modestly-patterned doublets with slit sleeves to show the silk shirt underneath, tight hose he almost had to be sewn into, innumerable chains and circlets dripping in jewels like teardrops. The outfits came and went, he was repeatedly assessed and re-dressed, until it was finally decided that he would wear charming shades of light blue, with a silver diadem that wound gracefully up his horns like vines of amethysts.

When he was allowed to sit down (to have his fur combed and his claws filed, ostensibly for the practicality of not hurting any potential dance partner), he managed to hold back a sigh. It wasn’t the easiest thing he’d ever done. He was grateful for how people were fussing over him, he was grateful for the care they put into dressing him, and he liked pretty clothes as much as the next person, but he wasn’t looking forward to the masquerade.

That had no bearing on anything, of course. He’d go, and he’d dance, and he’d make the best of the first time he’d be seen by the competitors. The masquerade would be a success, and he would fulfil his duty perfectly. That was the way it had to be, and he took strength in it: if he kept repeating that to himself, it was easier to remember that this was the right thing to do.

So he walked down the eerily quiet corridors to the ballroom, appropriately late, and waited in the antechamber, staying very still. Messing up his clothes after people had put so much effort into them wasn’t what he wanted.

The room smelt of lavender from the crushed rushes on the floor, but the heady smell of incense and spices was thickening in the air. The ballroom would be even worse with it, mixed with perfumes and scents from everyone and the sharp smell of alcohol. Sweat too, as time passed, and it was going to be stuffy and altogether far too hot as the evening wore on. Asriel didn’t sigh. The low sound of music thrummed in his chest: more a rhythm than a melody, with heavy doors between him and the instruments, but it was close enough. He just had to wait, now. And then be introduced. And dance, and smile, and make conversation, and he was used to all of it, so it was fine.

Even if the one person he wanted to dance with wasn’t here, it was fine.

It went well enough, from what he could tell. His parents kept smiling at him encouragingly as if he hadn’t done this exact routine before, and there were a lot of meaningful gasps and cheering when he was introduced. Presumably that was a good thing, and people weren’t simply having second thoughts about marrying a monster. He hoped it wasn’t that. His pride might never recover.

The difficult started when the dancing began and he was taken by his mother to personally meet the ten top contenders in the tournament. Resentment flared as he smiled and greeted their masks, all decorated with a single grey feather to mark them out as knights, similar to his own blue one. One by one, he inquired after their health, thanked them gently for competing for him, and by the end of the line he had quite run out of inventive ways of saying anything. It meant nothing. A tall, muscular man with dark brown skin and hair cropped close to his scalp; a mousy-haired young woman with a delicate frame that flared into wide hips and muscular thighs; a tall knight with oiled black hair and the least decoration in their clothes or mask out of all of them. None of them were what he wanted, what his eyes foolishly sought through the holes of his own mask.

The only one that came close was, painfully, the Buttercup Knight. The height was right, and their body was lanky enough even with clothes that seemed tailor-made to hide it. But the colouring was all wrong, and their hair was the wrong shape completely. They weren’t things he could overlook, but they did make it more upsetting. He didn’t spend long speaking to them, and they said nothing to him, only nodded.

Time passed, and the ball went on.

It became apparent in a casual way that he was going to have to dance with one or more of those contesting for his hand. Standing at the side-lines, gracefully making conversation with various nobles to try and test the waters for future alliances was all well and good, but he wasn’t skilled at it and he had a larger part to play. More pressingly, he could see his parents looking at him meaningfully every so often. With his back to a heavily embroidered curtain, he swept his eyes over the knights again. He _would_ have to make a choice eventually, even if the final choice wasn’t his to make at all.

Many of them weren’t dancing. They seemed to prefer talking in small groups, or – in the case of some – drinking heavily. He had no preference. Choose someone who looked like they knew what they were doing, or go for an easier partner who might not show him up? Asriel didn’t have any delusions about his own dancing ability: especially seeing as human dances were on the schedule for the night, he thought he might be able to do them passably and no better.

His eyes flicked over a woman laughing prettily, pressing up against a knight who seemed like she was enjoying the attention in an understated way, and he found himself watching the Buttercup Knight. They were alone, their back to a wall, much like he was. There was a fluted glass in their hands, but they didn’t seem to have drunk from it. The feather on their mask was bent, angling downwards.

The more he looked – past the swirling bodies of a hundred and more dancers, past the flickering lights and bright colours of a court in masquerade – the more he felt the miserable pull of interest. They really were similar. Similar enough.

They were also the reigning champion and totally alone, despite the attention that should have been lavished on them: people should have been fawning over them. He should make an effort.

A deplorable excuse, if he thought about it, so he wouldn’t.

Peopled parted for him like a sea of foxgloves, dripping in colour and rich fabrics, and it wasn’t long until he stood in front of them. Quickly, he reminded himself who he was, that this was merely the diplomatic course of action. If it had anything to do with the resemblance, he could never let himself believe in that. It wasn’t possible. It was a stupid, unrequited first love, with no hope and no future. He would not get his hopes up and he would not marry someone on the basis that they looked like the person he loved. It wasn’t fair and it wasn’t prince-like.

“Would you like to dance?”

They looked up at him, their gloved fingers tightening on the glass. Nerves, perhaps. Briefly, they nodded, and the feather bobbed as if it to exaggerate the energy they seemed to have a distinct lack of. It didn’t matter. He held a hand out for them to take and led them to the floor as a new dance began.

The Buttercup Knight danced as they performed on the field: with economic movements but perfectly in time. Under Asriel’s inexperienced hands, they spun and stepped and were dipped with absolute surety but no emotion at all. The stiffness of their shoulders – of their jaw when they leaned back far enough to see it under the mask – was another biting reminder.

If Chara danced at all, they would dance like this, he realised slowly.

The music carried them along: with it and the laughter and chatter of guests, there was no space to think, and Asriel would ordinarily have given in to that. He didn’t want to think. It was easier to let instinct fill it in for him. But he found he had to think, because the sight in front of him compelled him; under twinkling lights and the gleam of jewels and satin, the Buttercup Knight was beautiful in a way he was particularly vulnerable to. It was the similarity of two bodies, the resemblance, nothing more, he told himself. He told himself, and it didn’t work.

Guilt came, hot and fast, and he smiled as they began to dance again.

It was intolerable in a way he felt powerless against, so he had nothing to do but tolerate it. He was disgusting, shameless, unthinkably dishonourable to let his thoughts slip into the danger they were in. He stepped in time to the rising music and he hated himself, hated the pleasure of their weight against him, because they felt less and less like a substitute as time went on. He was not the type to mix up humans just because they looked so frustratingly similar, but it was as if two images were twisting in front of his eyes every time he looked at them.

Them – this knight he didn’t know.

Them – the prickly human he loved more than he should.

Them – switching and warping each time he blinked. The tilt of a head he knew, and the swing of hair he didn’t. The familiar bone structure of a wrist in his hand, and the curving yield of a body to his in a way Chara would never allow.

This, and that, and them and them, and guilt like poison but not so merciful.

The music swelled and faded, steadily growing to a climax, and it was years of discipline that kept Asriel’s feet moving, because that was how a prince acted. Princes did not run if it would cause a scene. They would smile and see it to the end as if there had never been any question that they would.  So he danced, and they danced in his arms, relegated to the more submissive of the two roles because of their size compared to his. He concentrated on their face, since that was the only thing too covered to bother him: it was only a mask, after all. A flimsy thing of black and blue cloth, of silver highlights mimicking designs on a fake human face.

Emotionless.

After perhaps a minute more of torture, the dance seemed to come to an end. The music stopped, violins humming their last, and he looked down at them to give his thanks. He didn’t get the chance, because for the first time that night, their eyes met.

Red eyes, and eyes he knew.

It still wasn’t an area of expertise for him, but he was substantially more certain now than before that that was not a usual colour for humans. He knew it wasn’t: he’d asked.

A great many emotions came over him at once, and if he hadn’t been wearing a mask, he would have shown them, training or none. He had been an idiot, of course, but he had never dreamed that this could happen. That they would be here, fighting for him.

For not-him. For the prince, not for the Ree they knew.

There were so many questions running through him, but he pushed them all from his mind. He was too happy: too ridiculously, upsettingly happy that he hadn’t betrayed them and that he loved them to distraction. That he loved them so much he would love them without knowing it was them. It was disorienting in an already unsteady world, but he had to take happiness in that because the alternatives were unthinkable.

He loved them, and he had to tell them, whatever they thought.

But before that: “Would you like to take some air on the balcony?”


	7. Regarding This Curious Organ Called a Heart

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains mild suicide idealisation and references to abuse that are going to get a lot stronger in chapter nine.

There was no doubt, because there was only one way this could end. Had they thought a mask and a haircut could hide who they were? It was spun into their every step, every word.

His heart pounding too loudly to think, Asriel lifted his hands to Chara’s mask. The grey-speckled feather waved gently in the breeze out on the balcony, reminding him insistently of what they were. The champion. _They_ were the champion in this ridiculous tournament.

It wasn’t real; it couldn’t be real, because Asriel had never been good enough to deserve this.

Their lips were parted, but they seemed to have no intention of actually speaking. That suited him fine: he wouldn’t have been able to reply anyway. The music that lilted from inside the ballroom would have to be words enough. There was so much he could say, but it seemed every thought had been stolen by them – how they looked under moonlight, how the faintest scent of jasmine mixed with the musky smell of their clothes, how this was everything he’d dreamt of.

Somehow, he managed to reach around their head to untie their mask. It fell onto the ground, just short of their feet.

It wasn’t a surprise, and they both knew it.

The sounds of laughter and soft, sweet words exchanged between lovers echoed in Asriel’s ears and he paid attention to none of it. The final barrier was broken and he felt choked by the inevitability of it all. As if the very stars above them had aligned for this, he had been drawn to them even in disguise. They, in turn, were the one favoured to win his hand. There were no coincidences; there was only the disarming surety that they were everything he wanted, and perhaps – just maybe – this was a sign that he could have them.

But they weren’t speaking, and without their permission, he couldn’t even move.

Something changed in their expression: their cheeks rose by the slightest margin, pressing their eyes into a heart-wrenchingly understated portrait of grief.

He couldn’t understand it.

As if they weren’t even aware of what they were doing, they reached their hands to his mask and pulled it off, making him scrunch up his eyes in discomfort. They dropped it, and their hand hovered at the side of his face, just enough that he could feel their skin. Their mouth opened, their poppy-like eyes glowing with the onset of tears.

Their lips trembled. “You’re-”

They couldn’t say anything else: their words were cut off mercilessly by a scream from inside the ballroom. Asriel waited a moment longer than he should have to look around, and then the blood drained from his face. The arched doorway was narrow, but the scene from inside was horrific enough even then: torches overturned, chaotic and futile escape, a rush of dark-clothed soldiers among the brightly-dressed dancers. Banners bearing the three crosses of Faille.

Where was the royal guard? They’d known that Faille might make a move on such a huge gathering of royalists: where was the increased security his parents had ordered? Why weren’t…

He felt his gut plunge when he saw the first splatter of blood, followed closely by a scatter of dust. It was not the first he’d seen, but here, among the terrified crowd, it blossomed up into the air like snowfall.

Someone was calling him

“Prince!” A guard, stepping through the doorway, flanked by several more to hold back attackers. “You must run! This isn’t safe!”

He didn’t know what to do, what to say, and (as if they could give him the answers he needed to find for himself) he looked down at Chara. They seemed held in place by sheer will alone, their eyes wide and horror written into every trembling limb.

“Prince Asriel, _please_!”

One of the guards fell to dust, not five paces from him. There was screaming to replace the gentle sounds of music; frantic running to replace the organised steps of dances. There was nowhere to go, except back inside, and every part of him rejected that.

And then Chara’s hand grabbed his. He looked at them, and they were already climbing onto the balustrade. They spared a single look at him.

“We need to run,” they said in a choked voice, and then they were pulling him up with them, jumping the two storeys fearlessly and pulling him with them. He had no breath for screaming: he only remembered to bend his legs on landing, and then he was being dragged to his feet and the both of them were running through the gardens, well away from the hellish blaze of the ballroom. Asriel tried to reassure himself: there were escape routes, for precisely this situation. It was not a death trap.

His vision was blurry when he turned his eyes away from the castle and onto Chara’s back.

They ran without hesitation, giving every impression that they knew exactly where to go. Past the sculpted laurel hedges, transformed into grotesque shadows in the darkness, over the bridge that spanned the ornamental stream, lit up in silver by the moon and stars. Through corridors lined in rose bushes, every bloom closed unforgivingly. Down past the orchard – the beginnings of pears showing unseasonably early – and across the fields beyond. Over a stile, into the waist-high wild grass that was even higher for them, ignoring every scratch and brush of seed heads that set his nerves on end. Straight through into the looming treeline of the forest.

They didn’t stop until the two of them were completely caught in the dark embrace of oak trees, but then they both collapsed to the ground, breathing heavily. Asriel’s muscles were screaming at him, his pulse fluttering unevenly in his neck, and he didn’t even have the presence of mind to let Chara’s hand go. It was as if his fingers were sealed into position.

The forest was almost pitch-black. It was like being blind, and he had nothing to concentrate on but the meagre highlights where moonlight did reach them. Beyond that, there was Chara’s laboured breathing, and his own heartbeat. He felt light-headed.

The first thing they said to him was, “I’m sorry.”

He had to pause a moment, to make sure he hadn’t misheard. “W-what?” he asked weakly. “What do you…what do you have to be sorry for?”

Rather than answer, they pulled their hand away from his and picked it up by the wrist, leading him to their left arm. They pulled down the glove and ran his fingers down their forearm. Three crosses, branded into the skin.

He leapt back from them, hugging his hands to his chest. Their expression was utterly masked by the gloom of leaves above them. He hoped his was too.

Neither of them spoke: this, too, was not something that had to be explained to be understood.

He needed answers, and they weren’t making any move towards him so there was no immediate danger. Except, he realised with alarm, he didn’t feel in danger at all, regardless. It was shock that had sent him away from them, and horror that anyone would hurt them like that. But they weren’t an enemy. Whatever they were, they weren’t that. He refused to think that of them.

“Explain. Please,” he said in a voice raw with confusion. Everything was too much, and he could only give thanks that they were in darkness and relative silence. He could not have borne anything more distracting, not when he already felt like his heart would give out.

“I’m one of Faille’s agents,” they said bluntly, without emotion. “There are currently ten of us in the tournament, and many more were sent but failed to progress. The plan is simple: win, get to a position of trust in the eyes of the royal family, and kill them if given the chance, or open the door from the inside.”

“Oh,” Asriel said, because there was nothing else he could say.

“Tonight is the first attempt. Our leaders wouldn’t have risked it, but they said I was close enough, and my…my commander vouched for me. This plan was simple too: they like to be straightforward. I would dance with you, I would take you away from the crowd, and I would kill you while our forces ripped through the guests.”

“Oh.” His voice cracked.

“I didn’t.”

The emphatic obviousness of it all weighed down on Asriel like a crown. He didn’t know how he was supposed to process their words: Chara always held things back, always kept truths to themself, hoarding them all selfishly so they could retain bargaining power. Were they hiding things now? What were they doing? He didn’t understand them at all.

“I didn’t,” they repeated, and the words splintered into a sob. “I didn’t, and it was so easy. You were staring at me for so long: your guard was lowered beyond anything I could have hoped for. But you’re like that, aren’t you?”

It finally occurred to him that this was a revelation for them too.

“You didn’t know I was the prince.”

“ _You never said anything_.”

A horrible silence, in which accusation festered.

“I’m not from here,” they said with a little more control than before. “I’m from a village that’s almost entirely human. I’m not…used to a race that has quite so much physical variation. I thought…I never made the connection between you and the king and queen. I thought you were just Ree.”

Guilt speared him as unto a hunted boar; struggling against it, he cried out, “I’m sorry! I never meant to deceive you! If I’d thought, I would have-”

“Told me you were the prince? With Faille out for your blood? You’d have to have been an idiot.” They laughed shortly, unpleasantly. “Except you are, aren’t you? You’re still here.”

“And you haven’t killed me.”

They didn’t answer. After some time, there was a rustling of fabric, and then the dull sound of something hitting the ground in front of his legs. He touched it, felt the cold, sharpened metal under his paw pads.

He would have given his heart to see their face, but the darkness was unrelenting.

He would have given his heart to them for free.

Taking a breath that shuddered in his throat, he asked, “Would you have killed me if, somehow, you hadn’t recognised me?”

“Yes.” Without hesitation.

He exhaled. “So it’s me.”

“It’s you.”

Asriel wanted to cry. From what, he wasn’t quite sure.

“Do you have any idea,” they said with a smile in their voice, “what will happen to me when I go back?”

“They’ll kill you.”

“No.” The smile was wider. “I’ll be branded a traitor. I will be humiliated and brought to my knees, and stripped raw by words alone. From our leaders, or from my commander, it doesn’t matter. I’ll be the traitor who ruined the best chance we might have had. And then I’ll be brought to stand before your justice. I’ll be painted as the figurehead of tonight’s coup, and I’ll be sacrificed for the cause. You’ll kill me.”

“That’s not true!”

“Don’t lie, Ree. I’ve told you before, haven’t I?” They made a sound that could have been a laugh, anywhere else. “I hate liars.”

He did not say that they had lied to him just as much as he had lied to them, because he knew what they would say to that.

“Then why aren’t you killing me?” He did laugh, then. Like it took all the energy from his exhausted body, he slumped back against a tree trunk. “I’m tired, Chara. I don’t know what to do with any of this! I don’t know what to think and I’m so tired of pretending things I know aren’t true. I was so _happy_ tonight! It was everything I’d dreamt of, because the one everyone could see I was going to marry was _you_. The only person I’d ever want to marry. And then this: what am I supposed to make of this? Am I supposed to hate you now?” He swallowed heavily. “You can tell me to as much as you like: I can’t do that.”

“You’re an idiot.”

“I still can’t do it. You could stab me now and I wouldn’t be able to hate you for it. I know what Faille does, I know what lies they push onto their child soldiers, I know this isn’t your fau-”

“ _Don’t say that!_ ” they shouted, the sound sending birds flying some way away from them. “You don’t know _anything_ , Ree! Don’t pretend you haven’t been fed lies too. Don’t fucking act like your truth is the only one out there. Nothing is like how you think it is, and I can’t…I can’t do the only thing I’m supposed to, and I’m finally going to die like I need to, and it’s all because I can’t kill you.”

He said nothing.

“I can’t do it, so maybe that’s the answer. Maybe I don’t deserve to live at all, since I can’t do the one thing they asked of me.” Their voice was rising to hysteria. “This is the sign I’m really supposed to die, because the only way not to would be to kill you. I can’t do that!” Tears split syllables open, chafing them raw. “It’s your fault, because you were too kind to me. You were kinder than I ever deserved, and you stayed with me long after any self-respecting person would have left, and you acted as if I meant something to you.”

“You do. You mean…you mean everything.”

They sobbed like the sound had been torn from them. “I can’t do this. I can’t do this. They’re going to kill me, I can’t…I can’t _do_ this…It’s supposed to be so easy and I can’t do it. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, commander, I’m so _sorry_. Take it halfway and give up and it’s worse than if you’d never tried, because I can’t get out of it now, there’s no way back, I can’t do _this_ …I…I…”

They trailed into silence.

Unsure of every movement, he crawled towards them, the leaf litter damp and cold under his hands and knees. He stopped when he found their warmth, and sat back on his heels, brushing his hands on his thighs. A few tentative touches told him they had curled their knees up to their chest and buried their head there, their fingers like hooks dug into their flesh. With the greatest delicacy he could summon up, he moved their hands to their sides, then hugged them to his chest, resting his chin on their head, rubbing down their back soothingly.

Time passed. They mumbled occasionally, but it was inarticulate and mostly gasping for breath. Like a flower unfolding in the dawning sun, they slowly reached their arms up to wrap around his neck, pushing themself into him and pressing their forehead to his shoulder.

When they did move away, it was to kiss him.


	8. Everything That Makes Up the Miracle of You

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In stark contrast to the last one, this chapter contains mild sexual content (with bondage, because why not at this point)

“How long did you say we’d have to wait here for?”

Chara thought about the question for a worryingly long time, given they were the only one on his side with any idea how Faille moved, since they’d belonged to it. They didn’t anymore: he had to keep reminding himself that. It was a faceless uprising again: a wave of humans dissatisfied with the rule of monsters, ready to topple the already unsteady gentry, whether they were human or not, to spite his family. His parents. Him.

It was unsettling to think that so many people wanted him dead, or at least out of the way.

It was decidedly more unsettling to think that Chara had been one of them.

They finally looked at him, their arms crossed behind them as they leaned against a tree in the small clearing. Summer flowers waved their stalks like a sky of sunny yellow stars, awash in the green of uncropped grass. Somehow, it was cold; the dew clung to his fur and chilled his legs.

“An hour or two more, I think,” they said pensively.

He made a face. “That long? If, uh, if that’s the case, can’t you untie me a bit?”

“No.”

“What?” he whined, straining half-heartedly against the expertly-tied ropes around his ankles and wrists. They merely paid lip-service to bondage: he could have broken free of them easily if he wanted to. “Why not?”

“It’ll be a pain to tie them back up,” Chara shrugged, shifting their weight against the tree trunk. They were wearing loose-fitting clothes: heavy boots, trousers held up by string, a laced-up shirt, and it felt so natural that way. Asriel could still hardly imagine them feeling at ease in armour.

“Yes, but they’re going to chafe,” he pointed out, shuffling his thighs together, wishing he’d worn something warmer.

“Oh dear,” Chara grinned. “How unfortunate.”

“This is revenge, isn’t it,” he said flatly.

“Perhaps.”

“Well _fine_ , if you’re going to be that way.” Not at all peevishly, he turned his head to look into the woods surrounding them, trying to get comfortable in an emphatically uncomfortable position. He couldn’t say he wasn’t nervous. He had faith in the royal guard and the plan, but one did not usually sit and wait patiently for one’s enemies to arrive. Especially not while tied up.

If he didn’t trust Chara with his life and more, he would have been in a state, he just knew it.

“So we have hours to kill,” he said absent-mindedly, eyes caught by a falling leaf some way into the forest. It was in the middle of a beam of light breaking through the leaf canopy above.

“We do.”

Turning his eyes back to them, he asked mildly, “Do you have your archery things?”

They blinked, a crooked smile growing on their face until they laughed briefly. He mirrored their smile, brightening at the mere thought that he’d managed to make them laugh. They were breathtaking.

“Let’s not make that a habit as well,” they said, still grinning. “I’m going to miss one day.”

“Really? You didn’t miss a single bullseye in the archery round.”

“That was luck.”

“I don’t think so,” he said happily, seeing bashfulness blush across their face. “I think you’re just very good.”

They glared at him without much acid. “Then perhaps I’ll be ‘very good’ and make sure to hit you next time.”

“If it’s at your hands, I don’t mind.” He wasn’t quite sure why he’d said it: that was the type of thing he’d sworn to keep locked safely within him, more for his pride than for safekeeping.

“That’s sick,” they said shortly. It was a succinct evaluation, Asriel thought, so he didn’t say anything against it.

Before he could bring up any one of the many things he wanted to talk to them about – the tournament, the few hints they’d dropped regarding how they’d joined the uprising, their reaction upon entering the castle – Chara finally sat down in front of him, crossing their legs. It was still bizarre to see them with hair cropped so close to their skull when he was used to it hanging comfortably above their nape, but there were rewards. The delicacy it gave them, for one, or the way it made their neck look so much longer.

“Aren’t your legs numb?” they asked. It seemed guileless enough, but he knew them better than that.

“They are, a bit.”

“You don’t want to stretch them out?”

Were they doing this on purpose? “I would, but someone tied my ankles together and it would probably need an acrobatic feat to get out of this position right now.”

They looked him over with a critical eye. “You could shuffle out of it.”

“I’d prefer not to be covered with mud when we meet the people who want me dead, if it’s all the same to you.” He wanted to meet them with as much dignity as he had: he wouldn’t let them think he was unfit to be prince.

“Yeah, that’s fine.” They had that tone of voice they used when they were thinking about something else, and it irritated him a little. Just a little. What else was there to pay attention to? They were the one who’d started the conversation. If they’d wanted to think about the plan instead, they hadn’t _had_ to.

He was about to say so (much less fiercely) when he noticed their eyes. They weren’t looking at him, as such. They were looking – with a certain amount of ardency – at his thighs.

That was interesting.

“Is there something the matter?” he asked innocently.

“No, not particularly.” They didn’t look up, so he couldn’t confirm his suspicions that their eyes were darker than usual.

“Are you sure? My eyes are up here, you see.”

“That’s nice.”

With a burst of embarrassment and euphoria, he laughed. That made them look at him, and their eyes really were black. He had to look away.

“Does it make you uncomfortable?” they asked.

“In a _general_ sense, I think so…” he said, still laughing nervously and refusing to look at them. “But, I mean…don’t…feel you have to stop. If you like it, for whatever reason.”

“Oh. Thank you.”

A moment passed and Asriel spent it calming himself down. His efforts were ruined when they said, “Can I touch?”

Trying not to choke on air, he gaped at them. There was stiffness to their shoulders, but it wasn’t the repression he was so used to seeing. It seemed more like what he had seen from them on the field: rigid self-control as they held themself in check.

Not quite trusting himself to speak, he nodded. Frantically.

It was like a dream, if he was honest, and there was no reason not to be. They’d kissed – of course they had: he couldn’t forget – and it had been made clear to him that, fantastically, his feelings were reciprocated, but he hadn’t gone so far as to imagine that this was the logical conclusion of that path. He hadn’t, because to do so was to let himself imagine it could happen. And that just wasn’t prudent. He had to keep practical: there was no reason Chara (private, viciously hostile Chara) would want to so much as touch him.

And yet.

He had to look away: to watch them would be too much, he knew. So he kept his eyes fixed on the dappled forest floor to his side, his back arched, his arms stiff, and when they ran a first finger down one thigh, he had to bite his lip.

Every touch seemed to leave phantoms in his flesh as they traced fingertips over the thin (and yet far too thick) cloth. It grew worse when they finally used their hands fully, stroking down his thighs, letting their fingers linger almost tenderly at his knees before doing it again. He was shivering, struggling to breathe.

“Hard as rock,” they said softly, and he thought he might scream.

Instead, he choked out, “ _What?_ ”

“Your muscles. They’re so hard. I thought you’d only be soft, but you really are strong, aren’t you?” They brushed their fingers against him again: a gratuitous touch to emphasise their point.

He didn’t have anything to say to that, but they saved him from having to say anything at all by reaching up to run their hands over his hip bones, curving inwards and back out to follow the tops of his thighs again.

He was going to die. There weren’t too many options, which was comforting, but he knew without a scrap of doubt that he was going to die – from a heart attack or from embarrassment when they saw what they were doing to him, it didn’t matter. They rubbed circles with their thumbs just below his hips and he whined with what little breath he had left. The ropes were biting painfully into his wrists but he didn’t exert the scant strength he’d need in order to break them. Instead, he arched his back further, until his spine screamed at him, and tilted his head backwards as if that could possibly muffle the sounds he was making.

Their fingers brushed over him (on purpose: it _had_ to be on purpose) and a broken growl dragged itself out of his lips.

“Y-you can’t,” he said, as if the damage wasn’t already done. “They’re going to be here soon!”

“Then you’ll just have to restrain yourself,” they said.

“I don’t know how it works for humans, but that isn’t going to be possible,” he said through gritted teeth.

“Look, if I can hold myself back, you can too,” they said, sounding equally strangled.

“How is this difficult for _you_?”

They laughed sharply, without much mirth. “Do you have any idea how you look right now?”

The implication that he was enough to excite them made him snarl in frustration, wishing they’d be done with it and climb into his lap to kiss him. He straightened up, looking forwards again, and very almost spent then and there when he saw the state they were in.

Their cheeks were flushed, their hands now dug into the grass like clamps, and their eyes were so dark as to make any hint of red non-existent. More to the point, they were bending over his legs, pressing their lips to his left thigh in what was unmistakeably a kiss.

His hands were bound, so when they looked up (as if to gauge his reaction), he had no other course of action open to him but to lean down uncomfortably so he could kiss them properly. Mercifully, they leaned up to meet him and he could angle up a little more. They brought their hands to his cheeks, fluttering at the fur as if unsure of what to do, and then they seemed to come to a decision. Wrapping their arms around his neck, they arched up into him, tilting their head and bending their back until their chest almost met his.

They were so pliant: he wanted to hold them to him, but they were doing an excellent job of that themself as it was, so he hardly had the place to complain. He wouldn’t: they had their legs straddling his, their hips pressed up against his (he could feel them, just as they had to be able to feel him, and it was so heady he thought he might forget how to breathe).

For some time they stayed like that, moving against each other, gasping into the other’s mouth, but ecstasy could only last so long, and Chara pulled away from him, their face flushed and their mouth looking thoroughly kissed.

“We’ll have to stop. Need time to calm down,” they said, raising an eyebrow as they looked him up and down, grinning. They were in much the same state.

With an hour or so left, Asriel despaired of getting calmed down in time, but in that moment he wasn’t sure it mattered, he was so ludicrously happy.


	9. My Sin, a Passing Fancy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains 'on-screen' abuse from a mother figure (verbal) and a fair amount of graphic violence.

They didn’t get any warning for the arrival of Faille’s representatives. One moment they were waiting in silence – Asriel because he was gagged, for verisimilitude, Chara because they had shuttered up into professionalism – and the next there was a footfall, and a group of people stepped forwards from the gloom of the forest in twilight.

Chara walked to meet them, inclining their head in a curt bow, which was mirrored by two of the three strangers. The third smiled graciously. She was a severe-looking woman, in a high-necked dress that fell in stately lines, her razor-straight black hair piled up behind her head. Her arms were folded in a perfectly feigned pose of relaxation.

“You’ve done well, Chara,” she said, and smiled. It didn’t seem to agree with the lines of her face. “I’m very proud of you.”

“Thank you.” Their voice was stiff, exactly as Asriel remembered from the beginning, or from when he said the wrong things.

But he wasn’t an observer: he had a role to play as well. He strained against the pathetic ropes, growling lowly. A nervous boy peered over at him from the woman’s side. He was fragile: chestnut skin and hair the colour of white wine, huddling in clothes that were too big for him and staring at Asriel with unusually large eyes.

In a frail voice, he asked, “Is he secured?”

“Yes.”

The woman looked over at the third person, a girl about Asriel’s age, if he was any judge, though he wouldn’t necessarily say he was. His judgement of human ages was not the best.

“Rayne, check him.”

She nodded and walked over to where he was tied up. He growled, spitting curses that the gag turned into choked, meaningless syllables. Rayne didn’t hesitate, she only glared at him and crouched down. She was willowy: a similar build to Chara, but shorter. It was the first time Asriel had been in close quarters with so many young humans in one place, which was a sobering thought. Three was not a lot.

After tugging on his ropes and glaring at him some more for trying to overbalance her, Rayne straightened up, carding her fingers through her fringe, the only long part of her hair. A sign of lice, or precaution against them, Asriel knew that much. Monsters were never bothered by parasites like that.

“He’s fine.”

“Lovely, thank you.” The woman smiled as Rayne returned to her side, and then she turned to face Asriel, trees towering behind her, blocking out the setting sun. Chara still hadn’t moved: they barely seemed to be watching.

“Chara, you _have_ done well, although I am puzzled. Remind me: why did you not kill him when we planned? We lost many good fighters that night.”

It might have been his imagination, but Asriel thought he saw Rayne flinch. The boy beside her flicked his eyes to her, which was substantially more of a giveaway. Now they were both in the clearing proper, the grubbiness of their clothes and the hollow look to their faces became obvious. The woman had the same, but she wore it with a grim air that became almost royal with the way she held herself. Asriel knew that from a position of experience.

Not quite insouciant to the point of insult, Chara said, “I couldn’t: he didn’t give me a clear chance. I didn’t want to compromise the position I already had with a botched attempt. I’m sorry: this is the best I could do.”

“Well, it _is_ very good. I’m disgusted that the royal family has lasted so long, if they don’t even have the security to stop a single assassin.”

Chara grunted.

“Oh, but you must forgive my mistake,” the woman said. “That isn’t what happened, is it? You’re lying to me.”

Asriel didn’t get the full effect of the woman’s expression because it wasn’t directed at him, but he saw all the colour drain from Chara’s face, and that was enough.

The painful urge to stop whatever was hurting them came upon him like lightning through his veins, but it was pointless: the second he jerked forwards, he felt cold metal at his throat. Chara’s eyes flicked over to him and widened, their mouth opening. They closed it just as quickly.

Self-restraint had never been a strength of his, but fear was excellent persuasion. Asriel stayed still, every heartbeat sending ice through his body.

This wasn’t according to plan. His thoughts were scattering out of control: what were they going to _do_?

“Your Highness,” the woman said, turning to him, “it’s a pleasure to finally see you like this: trussed up and at our mercy. You can rest at ease: we won’t hurt you, so long as you don’t prove a nuisance. If you do, however, decide to cause trouble, Servin will be more than happy to slit your throat so we can use your head as a bargaining chip instead.”

It took one look at Chara’s expression to tell him the position he was in: if possible – and it clearly was – they’d gone even more ashen than before. Their body had stiffened to the point of tremors. But he didn’t even need their expression, or those of Rayne and the boy, to tell him that he shouldn’t move. The knife at his throat was firm; the hand holding the rope that bound his wrists was expertly placed so that, at the slightest provocation, Servin could twist it viciously and break his bones. He did not doubt that they had the strength for it, because doubt like that would only lead to mistakes.

He had to think, but he couldn’t even remember how to breathe.

That the plan had to be changed was obvious: Faille were apparently expecting the royal guard, so an ambush was now useless. They were going to have to rely on sheer numbers, and while that might yet work, it didn’t bode well for his chances of survival. He had never been brilliant at strategy, but he knew that much.

Pride alone kept hot tears back, but it was a close thing.

“It’s quite fitting, I suppose,” the woman said pensively. Her back was still to Chara, as if she expected no retaliation. She didn’t, and Asriel knew with terrifying certainty that she was right not to. She went on, “Our leaders couldn’t spare the time to meet you: you’re not quite high up enough on the scale, so you’ll have to make do with us.” She tossed a glance back at Chara. “They’re a little tied up with the king and queen, you understand.”

“ _No!_ ” Chara choked, holding themself back only at the last minute, digging their fingers into their elbows, their expression well past distress. It seemed grotesque, somehow, that someone usually so good at hiding their emotions could be unravelled in this way.

Asriel only knew he’d tried to leap forwards because of the keening pain in his wrists when Servin held him down. His breath was laboured, his pulse thudding in his ears, and he needed to move, he needed to get to his parents, he needed to warn everyone, he needed to _stop_ this and stop whatever was hurting Chara.

He couldn’t move, because to move was death, and he’d help no one dead.

He wasn’t helping anyone as it was. He was totally useless.

 “I’m disappointed, Chara,” the woman said, turning back to them fully. Her arms were still folded; her voice was without smugness or airs. Just genuine disappointment, and he could see it hit Chara like a punch to the gut. He strained again, and Servin’s arms tightened against him, their knee shoved into the small of his back.

“You were so promising. You were supposed to be better than this. We really thought you understood us. Was it easy to betray everyone?”

“Jacquie…” the boy said in a tone too scared to be effectively reproachful, wringing his hands. Rayne put a hand on his shoulder, as if to hold him back.

Jacquie ignored him. It was getting difficult to see, but Asriel would swear there were tears glistening in Chara’s eyes. Again, he snarled against the gag, and Servin had to press the knife into his throat to get him to stop. He thought he could hear them breathing against his ear.

“Perhaps you never had anything to you to begin with,” Jacquie went on. “We’ve had them before: children who join because they want the sense of community, but don’t understand what we’re fighting for. But I really thought you were intelligent. It’s upsetting to me, you know: I didn’t think you were so base as to sell your family for this. I thought you were better than the gutter rat everyone believed you were. I thought you had some measure of honour in you, or at least competency. Clearly I was wrong. It’s really so disappointing, Chara.”

“That’s not it!” Chara screamed, trembling so violently that they seemed ready to collapse. Their voice was hoarse, crumbling into the beginnings of tears. “I swear that wasn’t it! I’m sorry Commander, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I didn’t meant to hurt you, _I’m so sorry_!”

Suffocating anger faltered in Asriel’s throat, retreating into something very like grief. To see Chara like this – fists shuddering with tension as they tried to push apologies out of their mouth like air – was a revelation. He hadn’t realised how weak he was, before. This wasn’t something he could do anything about.

He could only struggle powerlessly, rallying his strength to make a break for it, but Chara – still breathing apologies – caught his eye and their expression told him all he needed to know. There was no point in trying, because it would only get him killed. He wouldn’t let himself be killed in front of them. Though he did his best to relax into submission, it was too late: Servin twisted his wrists in warning, and tears spiked the corners of his eyes.

Still, Chara apologised, and Jacquie watched them do it as if she had never felt emotion in her life. From the resigned look on Rayne’s face, this was normality.

A scream grappled at his throat, begging for release – anything, as long as it wasn’t the agony of helplessness in the face of something he couldn’t stand. But the gag was tight against the corners of his mouth, and the bestial growls escaping him didn’t even make the hands that held him flinch.

He needed to _move_. The need to kill this woman – anyone in his way to warning his parents, anyone who would hurt Chara – was a fever feeding him useless energy, forcing him to strain at his captor’s hold until the knife bit into his skin.

Very rapidly, thought became distant, pushed behind the need to act.

Utterly unaware of him, Jacquie finally spoke, with an air of total calm. “You’re not. You’re not sorry at all. You’re just a disappointment. You couldn’t even cover your tracks properly: did you think no one would notice you slipping off for countless meetings with the prince? That no one would see you run with him that night? There are limits to naivety, or I thought so.” She sighed. “Was he so tempting? Was it so easy to abandon everyone for a few empty promises of affection? I admit there’s something romantic to an affair with a prince, but I thought you were better than that. I didn’t realise you were so cheap. How many times did he have to ask before you let him get a leg over you? Or did he have to ask at all? Perhaps you simply rolled over and presented yourself the second he pretended to care about you. Was that it? A hollow confession, some lies, and you let a beast mount you? It seems the kind of thing you’d do.”

Asriel didn’t see Chara’s reaction. He didn’t see anything: it became a blur as he roared, ripping free of his restraints and letting blinding rage sear his flesh, his every bone. There was white-hot pain but it was understated, like something that happened to someone else; sensation was dull and yet he still felt the warmth of blood soaking his fur, the sickening feeling of slicing through flesh jaggedly. Uncleanly. He struck out with claws, ripped and broke whatever he could grab, crushing, tearing, biting, screaming with anger he couldn’t contain, and he only stopped when he heard their voice.

“Asriel, _enough_!”

There was no disobeying them: he fell to his knees, exhausted. Breathing heavily, he became aware of what he’d done.

Servin was a formidable soldier: there was no doubting that from their corpse. But there were things that could be done and things that couldn’t. Humans and monsters were different: that was the problem. No human could stand up to a boss monster on the cusp of full maturity, not if the human didn’t have the time to use their weapon.

Sensation came back slowly, and Asriel welcomed the respite. His muscles were aching and he had a series of cuts over him – dust scattered over the white of his fur – but he was in no immediate danger. His head snapped up so fast it hurt, and he looked Chara over, but they too were unharmed. Totally.

He fell back on the grass, breathing a sigh of relief.

From what he could see, Servin, Rayne and Jacquie were all dead, in various states of disarray. It was a source of piercing chagrin to him that Jacquie had seemingly died the quickest: her neck was cut through, but nothing else marred her body. The boy was nowhere to be seen.

Set against the rapidly dulling light, Chara’s expression was unreadable simply because he could barely see their face above him. For the time being, he didn’t want to. Disgust and rejection were not things he could take, not for a few minutes. Not for an eternity, but he wouldn’t get that. He had to be reasonable.

So, for a precious minute or two, he lay on the wet grass and let the breeze cool him as he got his breath back.

It wasn’t over.

Struggling against his own limbs, he got up, swaying until he steadied himself. There were still things to do. He still had to save everyone, but before that, he had to wait for them. He did not have the luxury of time in which to think about what he’d done. He had to push it away, out of mind so he could concentrate on what he needed to do.

Their face was visible now: he was close enough that the rising gloom meant little. They were utterly expressionless, a small spatter of blood on one cheek and on the front of their shirt.

There was no sound at all.

“We need to go,” Asriel said quietly. “Is the boy who ran going to be a problem?”

They shook their head: two short movements. “Sam never really believed. He’ll go back to his…to Geoff, and they’ll leave.” Their voice gave nothing away.

Asriel nodded, feeling his body settle into resignation. They hated him. They’d locked themself up: they wouldn’t even look at him. He knew that, and he stored the knowledge away, because it wasn’t the time. Later, he would cry and scream and grieve what he’d lost, but he wasn’t going to do it now. That wasn’t prince-like.

“I’m going to my parents. Take care.”

He didn’t wait for a reply before turning and first jogging, then full-out running through the forest. Scrambling down hills made slick with decomposing leaves, ignoring the scrape of bark or the whip of branches he didn’t see in the darkness, he ran. It took him until the edge of the forest to realise that he still hadn’t seen anyone. The royal guard should have been close by, but they were nowhere to be seen, or heard. No sign of them, and that was troubling. He wended his way through the tall grass, wishing he could go faster, wishing he could ignore the lump in his throat and the regrets that felt like rot festering within him.

There wasn’t time to talk it over with them. He knew that. Duty came first.

He was well out of breath when he got to the palace gardens, his already exhausted body protesting movement. A pity, but not insurmountable. There was still so much to do, but he was coming to realise that he had no idea where to go. He’d expected – feared – chaos, fire and destruction like the night of the ball: a flurry of dust to coat the grounds.

There was nothing. He stood, unsure of himself, breathing heavily and surrounded by night-blooming flowers that seemed to mock him. He tried to think, as impossible as that felt. Where would they be? He had expected sound, but there was a cover of silence. What was going on?

Spinning on his heel, he ran back to the forest, the chilling realisation that he must have missed something roiling through him. He should have seen the royal guard (and his parents – he wanted to see them so _badly_ ) on the way through, if they were there, but perhaps he’d been careless. Rocks and uneven ground pressing into the pads of his feet dully, he ran back.

He didn’t get far before he saw someone coming towards him.

Chara was out of breath but holding up well, using the length of their legs to their advantage. In the moonlight that flooded the field, they almost looked themself when they pulled to a stop, breathing heavily some way in front of him.

It was a façade of normality, clearly, but Asriel, wretchedly, didn’t have the time to worry about that.

And then they said, breathlessly, “They’re fine.”

“What?”

He was being good: he was keeping his face free of emotion and his voice level. He was not running to hold them as they panted, doubled up a scant few paces from him. He was not moving, because that would be the end.

“They’re fine,” Chara repeated, a little steadier but no less stiffly. “I saw them, in the forest, with the guard. They were fine.” A moment to breathe, and they continued. “Adrien and Prakse, our leaders…they’re fickle. They don’t fight if they don’t see the point. They must have talked instead, come to an agreement, fuck, _I don’t know_.”

Shaking, they collapsed to their hand and knees, the sight of them almost drowned out by grass and darkness.

“I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t _know_. But…but they’re fine,” they breathed. A conclusion.

That was enough. He trusted them with his life and more, inadvisable or not.

Slowly, he walked over to them. He didn’t touch them. He just looked: watched the curves of their shoulder blades, their hunched back trembling. He wondered if they’d stopped trembling since what Jacquie had said to them.

He doubted it.

“Thank you,” he said softly.

What else was there? Even if they wanted someone with them as they shattered slowly, they wouldn’t want him. He had to do what was best for them, and that meant leaving. He turned, the grass rustling as it parted for him.

“ _Don’t_.”

As ever, their voice tied and bound him better than any ropes could. Hope fluttered into his chest and he tried to kill it. He really tried.

“Don’t,” they repeated without lifting their head. “Don’t go. They’re fine, so don’t go, please, I’ll beg if you need me to, but don’t leave. _Please_.”

He wasn’t strong enough to ask why. He couldn’t even stop relief from washing through him, a balm over the crushing fatigue and crumbling self-control. His parents were alright. Faille wasn't going to attack again for the time being. He was alive.

Was it alright to act in a way that wasn’t befitting a prince, for one night?

He wasn’t strong enough for this, either.

What started as a tentative hand on their back broke into him crouching by them, their shoulders touching, clutching their hand to his chest. There were tears running down his face, but he didn’t make a sound.

He didn’t want to think about what he’d done. It had been necessary, he knew that, and he wouldn’t do it differently, but he couldn’t stop crying. Couldn’t stop shaking.

Chara moved to cling to him, pushing their face into his chest, and he held them.


	10. I Love You As Much As Our Happy Ending

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mild sexual content, lots of macking, you know the drill. One left.

The entire ceremony felt like a dream. Asriel was surprised he didn’t collapse halfway through, but somehow he managed to stand still as befitted the prince being given away (euphorically). He waited, smiling gently to hide how he really wanted to smile, and watched with as much calm as he could maintain while Chara walked up to the dais.

The crowds were buzzing with whispers: the failed coup and the subsequent disappearance of Faille were on everyone’s lips, and Chara was in everyone’s eyes as the instigator. They carried it like the burden it was. Very few people knew the truth, and it was better like that, but rumours glistened around the court like an oily sheen – difficult to rid oneself of and faintly disgusting. Chara carried those too, with poise and surety if not elegance, as they knelt in front of the thrones to be presented with their coronet and – because they had both already given their consent, eagerly – to be handfasted with Asriel in lieu of an engagement. The wedding could come much later.

The crowning of the tournament champion dissolved into celebration, with tables of food and drink being brought out for the public, and musicians setting up their instruments. Asriel and Chara shared one look, joined hands, and left as quickly as they could, running when they were out of sight of the people flocking to the party.

“Ugh, I thought that was never going to _end_ ,” Chara spat, their chest heaving.

Asriel led them to the castle, still slightly drunk on the feeling of their hand in his with no repercussions. The scenery they passed was a blur, because he wasn’t looking at it. “It was worth it, though, right?”

They opened their mouth to answer, then seemed to think better of it, nodded, and stayed silent as Asriel took them up the stairs behind the kitchens. They likely would have been drowned out by the clatter and shouting in there, anyway. Single-file, still holding hands, they walked up the heavy stone steps, round and round, until they got to the third floor, and then Asriel opened a door and brought them through into an empty receiving room. The two of them walked out into the hall, still catching their breath slightly. He risked a glance over at them.

There were no words to describe how they looked, but perhaps that was simply because until now they hadn’t been his, he hadn’t been theirs, there had been lies and complications separating them. Perhaps that changed one’s perspective a little. But they wore the monster-style ceremonial robes with ease, the gold coronet sat on their wind-brushed hair like it belonged nowhere else, and their cheeks were gently flushed as they looked at him, raising their eyebrows in what was probably an attempt at being sardonic.

“Yes?”

He smiled, pathetically happy. “Admiring the view.”

“Disgusting,” they sneered, turning their head away as if that could hide the pink rushing to their ears.

It was so freeing, to laugh and have them bump against him angrily in retaliation. In the days after Faille’s explosive retreat, Asriel had become far too used to the sight of tears on them as they broke slowly in private. He wasn’t the one to put them together again, mostly. He had himself to worry about. Much of the time, they had sat in silence, playing with each other’s hands or hair, or crying, or confessing, or kissing frantically when words weren’t enough to stop memories, and Asriel felt he was at least somewhere on the road to understanding them now.

They, in turn, had helped convince him that what he’d done had been self-defence, pure and simple. Whether it was true or not meant little. It was what he wanted to believe, and it was what they believed. If they weren’t disgusted, that was a start.

And their expression was far from disgusted when they smiled up at him, squeezing his hand.

“Where are we going?”

“I’ve got no idea.”

“This is _your_ home,” they sniffed. A moment of footsteps echoing through empty corridors. “I’m still getting used to that.”

“It’s a bit excessive, isn’t it?”

“One way of putting it,” they said mildly, looking out of the row of windows on their side of the corridor. The sun was just set, torches bursting into life in the gardens outside, and if it hadn’t been a celebration then people would have been along to close the thick curtains. As it was, the lamps were lit but the castle still felt unsettlingly deserted.

But they were together, and that meant enough that he didn’t mind. They were together, there was nothing to suggest they wouldn’t be for the foreseeable future, and that in itself was a blessing. They were going to be okay.

“Did you…” Chara started, almost thoughtfully. “Did you have a reason for running away from the celebrations?”

“I didn’t really want the loud noises, I think. Or the fussing, or the forced conversation.” He looked down at them. “I’d rather just be with you.”

“Me too,” they nodded. “But was that it?”

He frowned, confused. “What else is there supposed to be?”

“Oh.” They came to a stop, and he stopped too, turning so they were facing each other, still holding hands. Chara blinked. “I’m surprised. I think I misread you.”

Now it was his turn to blink. “Huh? What do you-”

He was cut off abruptly by Chara pressing their hips against his as blatantly as they reasonably could. Sucking breath through his teeth, he looked down at them, and there was something deliciously desperate in their eyes.

“We’re alone, aren’t we?” they said, tilting their head. “You’ll do this for me, won’t you?”

“I’d do anything for you,” he gasped, and (shockingly) he wasn’t only saying that because of how they were rolling their hips against his.

“That’s a nice offer, but let’s start with making me forget my own name.”

Surprised but not displeased, he didn’t waste any time in taking them up on the challenge. It started easily, simply: lips together, heads tilting to find the right angle, their hands wrapping around his neck and his hovering awkwardly around their back. It wasn’t as if this was the first time, or as if they hadn’t gone further, but it felt out of place. Enjoyable, because the feeling of their tongue in his mouth – and the knowledge that they wanted it there – couldn’t very well _not_ be enjoyable, but out of place.

As they started to buck up into him, running tense fingers through the fur at the back of his head and up to take hold of his horns, he thought he might understand.

‘ _Make me forget my own name_ ’. There was some relief in release, and the more he thought about it, the more tempting it felt to him. So – without a backwards glance – he gave in.

There would be time for facing responsibilities later.

Pushing his tongue deeper into their mouth without quite knowing what he was doing, he bent and hooked an arm under their thighs, lifting them up. They were lighter than he’d expected, even with heavy robes on, and they squeaked when they felt their feet leave the floor. It was too adorable to ignore: desperate for more of the sounds they might theoretically make, if he was lucky, he stepped forwards, pushing them back against the wall and grinding his hips into theirs in the process.

They moaned – a long, drawn-out sound that he gladly drank in as he kissed them. He wanted more, wanted to cry out with how much he needed them, and he broke away from their mouth with a gasp. They almost looked put out, until he lowered his mouth to their collarbone and began to kiss, bite, lick, whatever he could do, up their throat and to the lobe of their ear.

Breathing heavily, they pushed their head back against the wall, their fingers tightening on his horns as if to guide him, their legs wrapped just below his waist. The position was not chosen randomly.

They moved against him so he could feel how hard they were, just as they could feel his own arousal, and his hands slipped lower, pushing up under the robes to the small of their back, rubbing circles that went steadily lower until – finally – they cried out.

It echoed in the hall. They both went still, barely breathing with the need to hear if anyone was coming, if anyone so much as moved in their general vicinity. Mercifully, there was no sound: only the distant noise of laughter and music. Reasonably speaking, Asriel knew it was essentially his castle and he could do as he pleased in it, but that still didn’t take away the shame. He looked Chara in the eyes at the same time they looked at him, and they both burst into whispery laughter, as if to cover themselves up.

“Perhaps we should move,” he said softly, kissing along the side of their mouth.

“Mm, maybe.” Their voice was distracted, which he took as a victory. “You still have a name to make me forget, after all.”

“I’ll make sure mine is all you remember,” he said reassuringly, giving their hips a last squeeze before moving his hands to better support them as he moved away from the wall.

“For that, I’m not even sure if I should _let_ you,” they said with an air of distaste that was somewhat lessened by their grin. But they leaned in to kiss him anyway.


	11. The Defilement of the Sacrificial Lamb

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Explicit sexual content eyy

Asriel looked at them, dubious. They didn’t turn around to appreciate it, still reordering his meagre bookshelf with surprising vigour.

“So you’re saying humans usually…don’t, until the wedding night?”

“Well, I mean,” they shoved a particularly heavy tome in between two others, frowning. “Some do. If you follow a certain school of thought then you’re not _supposed_ to. Then again, if you follow that school of thought, you and I shouldn’t even be getting married.” They turned to gauge his reaction and, seemingly upon finding it to their liking, turned back to the books with a smile. “Don’t look at me like that, Ree, you know there’s a lot of anti-monster feeling: why shouldn’t there be whole groups of people opposed to inter-species marriage? Anyway, a lot of couples do sleep together before, obviously, but the wedding night is still considered special.”

Asriel nodded, somewhat pacified. Not totally: he was still fizzing with nerves, unsure if Chara was finally going to pick up on his hints or if he was going to have to say something truly embarrassing. He curled his legs up to his chest, fiddling with the stitches of the blanket he was sitting on. It was a huge bed, unnecessarily so even for a boss monster, but he was glad for it now. The curtains around it gave some semblance of cover too, even if they were tied to the bedposts.

He swallowed. “So, hypothetically, we wouldn’t have to wait, then?”

Chara went very still, a pile of books in their arm and one still in their hand, not quite pushed in between the others on the shelf. They recovered after a moment, but it had still happened.

“We wouldn’t. I don’t think that highly of pre-marital abstinence, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Oh. Good.”

They went back to pushing books in, and Asriel waited for them to finish. Perhaps it was important. The room felt disquietingly self-contained, as if they were the only people in the entire castle. And of course that wasn’t true, but with the rest of his chambers between them and the main corridor, it began to feel that way. The night outside was perfectly dark, and there were candles dotted around the room in tasteful and subtle places. Well away from the bookcase, for a start, which Asriel mostly noticed because he couldn’t tear his eyes from it.

Chara finished putting the books away, clapped their hands together as if to get rid of dust, then wiped them on their trousers for good measure. They didn’t turn around.

Asriel opened his mouth to say something (he wasn’t sure what, but he was almost certain it was going to be dreadfully embarrassing), but then they said levelly, “This has nothing to do with what we were just talking about, you understand, but I was wondering. Since I’ve had you tied up…oh, twice now, which isn’t much I suppose, though it’s a bit more than most princes get, and both times you seemed to, ah, enjoy it…” They trailed off, leaving the question open.

Trying not to die, he said quietly, “I, um. Do. Perhaps. If it’s you.”

“Oh.”

He nodded, suddenly very interested in looking at his hands and nowhere else.

“Oh, that works out quite nicely, then.”

 

*

 

“And you’re sure about this?”

Asriel nodded, not quite eagerly, since he couldn’t actually speak. Had he been able to, he would have pointed out that he’d been quite sure about this for weeks and was, in fact, coming to think that he’d been sure about it for the entire two decades or so of his life. But since he was gagged, he said nothing of the sort.

Tightening the ropes around his hands and tugging on them, Chara moved back, hands on their hips, surveying their work with a critical eye. With apparently very little prior experience in tying people up despite what they’d done to him in recent escapades, they’d tried they best. His ankles were tied and under him, his wrists bound together and to the headboard, and there was soft fabric gagging him gently. None of it was painful.

“Well, if you’re sure,” they shrugged, climbing onto the bed to sit in front of him. “You _can_ break out of those, right?”

He nodded with more conviction than before.

“Alright, well.” They peeled off their gloves, throwing them to land neatly on the floor next to the chair they were probably aiming at. “If you do feel like you need to stop for whatever reason, just…screw up your eyes tightly and shake your head. I feel like that’s probably not something you’d do normally.”

Again, he nodded.

“Good. Well, I’m glad we’ve got that sorted out,” they said briskly. It was as if they were brushing their hands of what they’d done, and he didn’t miss how they weren’t quite looking at him. Just the ties, or the bed, but not him.

“And. You really are sure? I can do whatever I like?”

He nodded, again, with energy on top of eagerness. Impatience too, perhaps, though he wouldn’t have admitted to that even if his every muscle weren’t straining with anticipation, wishing they’d begin so he could let himself be swept away rather than mired in embarrassment. It would, admittedly, have been worse if they’d been looking at him, but since they weren’t, he had even more time to think about how awful it would be if someone got through three separately locked doors to reach the bedroom and find them like this. Scandalous, really, for a crown prince to sleep with his betrothed.

They lifted their eyes and all other thought left him without so much as a by your leave. For a moment, he forgot how to breathe, because they were smiling in a private way he was positive he’d never seen before.

“What I like,” they repeated, as if rolling the idea through their mind. “Well. If that’s what you want.”

More nodding, desperately.

“You don’t mind, then, do you?” Without waiting for an answer, they leaned forwards to kiss up the side of his jaw with one hand holding his horn for balance. Surprisingly chaste, until he realised what they had in mind for their other hand. He choked at the first contact, and as they picked up a rhythm, palming him, he began to wish he hadn’t asked for the gag. He wanted to kiss them back, kiss them breathless, but he could barely breathe himself as they rolled up against him, kissing along the sensitive skin on the underside of his ear.

The heel of their palm pushed against him agonisingly purposefully, and for the first time he strained against the bonds on his wrists. Chara paused, and then, as if they hadn’t, moved away from him, stopping only to kiss him lightly on the nose.

“It’s whatever I want,” they said, again, driving it in to a point well past redundancy, “so don’t go complaining.”

Asriel would have loved to clarify that he was far from complaining about anything at all, but then they shuffled away from him, almost to the end of the bed. A significant distance lay between them and it was one he couldn’t hope to stretch across. They began to unlace their shirt. Asriel decided that actually, he had some quite fervent complaints to make.

With an almost luxurious lack of hurry, they slipped their shirt off and hung it over the end of the bed, stretching in just the right way to arch their chest towards him, putting the stark lines of their hips to best effect. He saw them in details, because the entire picture was enough to drown in: the sinewy muscles of their arms, the soft, light brown of their nipples, the significantly darker brown of the hair leading down from their navel, starting to spread just above the fabric of their trousers. They relaxed again, and he had to physically restrain himself from breaking the bonds to go over and kiss them.

That was what it was about, in part. Self-restraint. More than impersonal bindings and ties, he wanted to know that he was holding himself back, on their orders. That became more difficult when they turned dark eyes on him, not quite smiling, and reached for the ties of their trousers.

There was a gourd of oil somewhere in the room – in one of the chests, if Asriel’s frazzled mind wasn’t misremembering – but they didn’t seem to think of that. They just spat on their palm, pushed the fabric down and started to stroke themself slowly, their eyes slightly lowered.

He began to react, violently.

“Sorry,” they said without an ounce of apology in their voice. “Is it frustrating?”

It was, it was: he wanted to break everything and go to them, take them in his mouth if that was what they wanted. To have them there – so close, but out of his reach – as they exposed themself for him was unfathomable torture. And yet, somehow, that was the point. The wood of the bed creaked in protest as he strained, twisted cloth bit into his wrists and ankles, gasps and growls came out broken from behind the gag, and he began to unravel.

He was painfully aroused: to some extent, the merciful thing would have been to undress him first, but perhaps that would have been too much as well. Perhaps he would have lost himself then, with Chara’s hands on his clothes and him unable to do anything about it. Impossible to tell now, and he had more important things to think about, like the desire to have his mouth on them.

Baring their throat, they bent their head back, one hand gripping the sheets. They were shamelessly uncovered, perfectly on view, but it was as a performer unto their audience. It was something he was supposed to enjoy, and he was enjoying it, beyond the impatience and frustration; beyond the roaring need to be with them, he could appreciate how they looked. Too much, in fact: with the budding sheen of sweat on their neck, the glazed look to their eyes, and the way their hair was slowly falling into disarray, he could think of no one lovelier.

He whined, long and low, and they looked at him. Their parted lips curled up into a smile. “Everything alright?” they asked, breathlessly.

In lieu of an answer, he tried to lift himself up in some futile effort to get friction to his cock. It was useless: from the position he was in, he couldn’t do anything, and he was left hard and wanting, too aroused to even feel shame. They grinned at him, lifting their hips almost gloatingly as they sped up their rhythm. It was affecting them too, and that was a sight to behold: the flush in their pale cheeks, the tremble to their hands, the fluttering sighs and hitched breaths they let out.

In contrast, his sounds were anything but delicate. Growls, groans of impatience against an unforgiving gag that muffled them, reducing them to the weak protests they were. The smell of them was thick in the air and he drank it in with each breath, rubbing his hands together painfully, constantly reminding himself that he wasn’t allowed to break free. Constantly, constantly, because that was what it took.

They spent, and his chest rumbled with a groan that ripped itself from within him.

It took them some time to return to themself, at least to a point where they could focus on him, grinning smugly and wiping a hand on their white-streaked chest. Limbs loose and relaxed, they came to him on hands and knees, kissing his nose, his cheeks, his forehead, as he strained and tried to get closer to them. Sitting back on their heels, they smiled.

“You really do like this, don’t you? I don’t think I’ve ever seen you hard without a rope on you somewhere.”

He had a variety of arguments to that, and many more spluttered protests, but they seemed far away. It didn’t really matter: even if they teased him, he would still do anything, be anything for them, since he was the only one they teased. No one else saw them smile like this; no one else saw their body in such an indulgent state of relaxation.

They reached their hands around the back of his head, untying the gag, removing it from his mouth, and throwing it to the side with no sign of the aim or accuracy that had carried them through the tournament. Asriel tested out his jaw, still breathless, and though there should have been so many things to say, he waited.

They looked at each other and ran out of patience at the same time, crashing into a kiss that was unduly painful until they angled themselves properly. He pulled on his bonds, ignoring the screeches of wood in his need to be closer, and it was a crushing disappointment when they put their hands on his jaw, pulling away. It was too tempting: he tilted his head, kissing their right hand awkwardly at first, and then eagerly as they moved it to give him a better angle. Running his tongue over their palm, he tasted the traces of their come all the way to the tips of their fingers, kissing each one in turn.

It was a type of play-depravity, sucking each finger like it was their cock, staring at them with eyes that wouldn’t focus and yet somehow seeing their hungry expression in damning clarity. He moaned, for them, and their lips parted, quivering. Tracing his teeth over their skin just enough for them to feel it, he pulled off their thumb and kissed their palm. There was heat shooting through him, pooling in the base of his gut all over again, as if he wasn’t already hard enough. They took their hand back. Doing a wonderful job of appearing calm, they said, “You can break the bonds, if you want.”

He snapped the fabric like dry leaves, kissing them again and pushing them down onto the mattress with his aching hands either side of them. At any other time, he would have taken a moment to stretch his wrists and work out the tension, but there was too much already buzzing in his body to worry about a few joints. He was far more interested in the way they stretched their neck up to meet him, arms curling around his neck to pull him down.

He could feel their cock start to harden again against his, and it was making him lose himself. Grinding against them, he licked and kissed down their neck, drinking in the gasps and gulps he could feel pass through their throat.

They laughed, weakly. “Wait: lend me your mouth for a second.”

He looked up. “I’m sorry, what?”

“That’ll do.” They lowered a hand to his mouth. “Lick it again?”

To have them say that, their expression a delightful mix between innocent eyes and a mouth that looked flushed and thoroughly fucked, he couldn’t help but groan and lick up their palm again, as they asked.

“Good boy,” they purred, reaching down to undo the laces of his trousers. It was sickeningly sweet relief – he sighed when they took hold of both of them together, their hand nowhere near big enough but making an excellent effort even so. He could only try and support himself on shaking arms, letting his head fall to their shoulder

“You’re so…” he said in a barely-restrained voice that stuttered into a choke when they made surprisingly effective use of their thumb.

“I’m so…?”

“I _love_ you,” he groaned into their skin.

“Is that all? Well, of course I – _nng!_ – feel the same, but I was expecting – _ah!_ Would you _stop_ moving like that?”

He got out a few chuckles broken by uneven breathing, but by then all thought of reply was leaving him. Chara seemed to know it, and worked him faster, their movements growing slowly sloppier. Crying out into their shoulder, he spent first, and they stroked him throughout it, coming again shortly after.

Asriel had to hand it to them: they had stamina. He, on the other hand, rolled off them before collapsing onto his back and waiting for conscious thought to make its way back to him leisurely.

It took its time. Candles flickered, something suspiciously bat-shaped flew by outside the window, sweat cooled and dried, and they clasped hands without any real need to _do_ things. Doing things could be kept until later: this was a gentle sea of satisfaction and the tail end of pleasure, to be enjoyed at their own pace. Eventually, reality settled back in and Asriel reflected that dried come was not something he particularly wanted matting his fur, and he hauled himself to his knees, somehow making it off the bed and towards a convenient basin of water to clean up.

“Bring some for me,” Chara said without moving an inch.

He did, dropping a wet cloth on their face before getting to work on their chest with another. After their spluttering had faded into shivers and winces at how cold the water was, he said, “You didn’t mind, did you?”

“Mind what? The tying up? Of course I didn’t: I told you.”

“But there’s a difference between fantasies and reality, so…”

They rolled their eyes at him, pulling their trousers up to preserve some decency for reasons that were beyond him. “Thank you for that insight. It was _good_ , don’t worry.”

“Oh! That’s good, then. Um. If you did like it, could we…”

They sighed. “Yes, we can do it like that again, you awkward mountain of fur and bad decisions. Except this one: this was a good decision, as far as they go. Now come back to _bed_ ,” they said in a tone of (presumably) fake vexation. “I am _cold_.”

“Should I snuff out the candles?”

“That’s not going to get me warm any faster.”

“You’re so demanding,” he groused good-naturedly, unable to quite lock down a smile as he left the cloths on the floor, stripped off his shirt, and went to lie down beside them again. They turned to curl up into his chest and he put his arms around them, as if it were instinct; it was a perfect fit. And perhaps that was bias, but, stroking their back and feeling their fingers twist into the fur of his chest, he wasn’t sure he cared.


	12. Whether Pure or Obscene, I’ll Grant Your Every Wish

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't mean to continue this, but Shay/ao3 user valety gave me some excellent ideas and I felt like writing something to wind down, so here we are. Angst, architecture, and depravity because I can't think of a synonym that begins with 'a'.
> 
> This takes place at least a year after the last one, I imagine.

Asriel felt rather like he was sinking. With the view a fourth floor balcony gave him, the lands below him stretched out endlessly, and even the shroud of darkness didn’t make matters any better. It just made everything look larger: he could only see what was lit up by moonlight or faint clusters of light in the distance where villages nestled in between fields.

There was so much of it. There was just…so much. What he could see was barely even the beginnings of the kingdom itself. And everywhere – in those clusters of light, in the much larger cluster he’d see if he went to the other side of the castle to look down at the city – there were humans and monsters, each of whom had their own lives, their own desires, their own histories, their own problems.

The inevitable truth that he was going to be responsible for each and every one of those lives rarely struck him, but here, on nights like these, he felt ready to choke on it all. He pressed his hands into the rough, unforgiving stone of the balustrade, and breathed in air that was finally cool after a stifling day that had been broken up by a summer storm. There was time. He still had time, but it felt so cowardly to reassure himself that way.

Had he really been worthy of his name and family, he would have been preparing already, more than he was. He wouldn’t be running away.

There was a sound from behind him – the creak of a door opening and closing, the scrape of footsteps on stone. It was a relief to turn around and greet Chara with a smile as they leaned over the balustrade themself, stretching their arms out over the edge. He hadn’t seen them for much of the day since he’d had things to do and they’d chosen a small, shady spot in the library and essentially melted into it, glaring at anyone who tried to come near or let some light in.

“Hot day?” he asked.

From their expression, he was given to understand that the day had been a disgrace and if he ever mentioned it again, he’d regret it. Privately, he reflected that it was hardly his fault he’d been blessed with a much greater tolerance to heat than them, but there was no point in saying that. They couldn’t help their weak human skin.

“I’m surprised you’re still finding things to read in the library.”

“I’m reaching the bottom of the barrel,” they admitted. “I just finished an instructive guide on the best ways to catch perch.”

“Do you want to go fishing tomorrow, then?”

“Only if you hook the bait, keep an eye out for bites, reel it in and eventually kill it.”

Asriel grinned. “I think that’s defeating the point.”

“Really? I’d get to nap in the shade of some tree or other by a lake. Isn’t that the point?”

“If you want it to be.”

Perhaps he sounded too unenthusiastic or curt, but they turned to look at him, the ends of their hair fluttering in the breeze. It had grown out again since they’d last cut it, reaching just below their jaw. He concentrated on that, because he didn’t really want to admit that he couldn’t read their expression.

Eventually, they said, “Why were you out here?”

“Admiring the scenery.”

It was evidently an unsatisfactory answer because they frowned, reaching out a hand to brush something out of the fur of his shoulder. Then, in a tone that suggested they didn’t believe him but weren’t unwilling to play along, they said, “There’s certainly a lot of it.”

“There is.” He turned his eyes back to it, rubbing his hands together for something to do with them. “It’s all going to be mine one day, isn’t it?”

They paused. “In name, maybe. It’s not actually going to be _yours_ , of course, even if you are king. It’ll be your responsibility, but not yours.”

“Your seditious tendencies are showing again,” he said, but the playfulness didn’t come out quite right – the responsibility of it all was the part he was worried about.

“Good. Are you worrying about it?”

He slumped down, resting his chin on his arms and closing his eyes to the star-spotted sky. “Maybe. Yes. There’s so much to do. There’s all the normal things I’ll need to do just to keep it running, and then there are a million and one things that are inevitably going to pop up to ruin everything at just the wrong time. Bad harvests, fires, Faille or gangs like it, foreign hostility, unrest,” –his voice trembled– “wars, natural disasters, revolts–”

“Alright, stop there. All of those are surmountable. You’ve seen your parents surmount most of them, haven’t you?”

“Yes,” he said. He didn’t say ‘but they’re better than I could ever be’, but it was implied, and he imagined Chara frowned again. They didn’t say anything, at any rate. The night breeze whispered through his fur, chilling him; he had the passing wish that they’d touch him so he could feel their warmth. They didn’t, but that was reasonable enough, since they couldn’t be expected to read his mind.

Instead, they said, “Let’s go. You’re just going to depress yourself if you stay here.”

They seemed like an authority on the subject, and he was a servant to their every whim, so he followed when they walked back inside.

The castle was quiet. There was always somewhere quiet in its maze of halls and corridors and back staircases, but this was a different sort of quiet, and they let it wrap around them, not talking at all. Chara took his hand, squeezed it, and led him along without mentioning where they were taking him. He didn’t really mind. They only passed two people and both of these were too drunk to do much more than wish them a good evening cheerfully; it was peaceful. Asriel knew every turning, every room, every stone, and compared to the vast stretches of unknown land outside calling for his attention, it was comforting to be somewhere he knew.

The comfort was marred a little when they reached the lower floor and heard the raucous laughter that heralded the coming of what sounded like a sizeable group of people. Chara and Asriel looked at each other, agreed voicelessly that they didn’t want to be pulled into any conversations or drinking contests, and dashed for the nearest door, barring it closed behind them because Chara liked to be secure.

It turned out to be the throne room, and it was so dark it took Asriel a few moments to adjust his eyes from the torch-lit corridors outside. The only light was coming from the stained glass windows set high above the throne, at the end of the room opposite the door. The moon was bright enough that there were eerily dull colours spread over most of the rush-strewn floor, not quite reaching the edges where spectators sat while petty court was being held, but enough that the two of them could see.

“Creepy,” Chara said appraisingly, hands on their hips, surveying the premises with what looked like approval. “The columns around the sides are a nice touch. Lots of shadows. Are they Corinthian? Or Ionic? I can never remember the differences.”

“Corinthian – leaves and things rather than spirals,” Asriel answered a little mechanically. “I’m surprised you know them at all.”

Chara shrugged, walking slowly towards the throne, craning their neck to look up at the vaulted ceiling. “There was a man back in Faille – he liked learning, and he wasn’t very good at conversation so he’d occasionally come out with random factoids or try and teach us things.”

The voices and footsteps had long since passed by the throne room, leaving them totally alone in the echoing hall. Asriel found himself following Chara’s progression, walking over the milky red, green, gold and blue designs thrown on the floor by the moonlight.

He’d rarely been in the throne room unless he was watching one or both of his parents work, and it was sobering to be in it with no crowds or business to take care of. It was just the two of them, making their way to the throne that rose up out of a small stone dais like a menhir in an empty field. It was gilded, intricately-carved, and furs were thrown over it – their colours no less vivid for the low light – because there was an image to protect here, where the king was seen by the people. The throne was a symbol of power, of might, of so many things that Asriel felt bogged down by them all as if they were pondweed wrapping around his legs.

He came to a stop some way in front of it, staring at it blankly. Chara didn’t stop: they walked confidently, almost arrogantly, up to it, turned around and sunk down into it, crossing one leg over the other.

Resting their head on a hand, they smiled at him.

“That’s got to be some kind of treason,” he said weakly.

“You won’t turn me in, will you?”

“No.” He shook his head like an afterthought, snared in what Chara would call ‘idiocy, pure and simple’ as he took in how beautiful they looked. Perhaps they hadn’t meant to – or perhaps they had – but their face was thrown into near-darkness, their eyes were heavy-lidded red slits, their smile was a crooked, sly thing, and the relaxed confidence they indulged in only with him was something he felt he could get drunk on. And that was nonsense, of course, but he’d felt so much more prone to that kind of nonsense since he’d met them.

“You’re staring,” they pointed out, accurately.

“How can I not?”

“A little self-control goes a long way. You know, I have to say I thought this thing would be more comfortable.”

“Isn’t it?” He walked closer, stopping just in front of them.

They lifted their eyebrows. “You haven’t sat in it?”

“Of course I haven’t: I need to wait two years for that. Well,” he stopped, recalculating. “Twenty months. And just because I’m twenty-one doesn’t mean I’ll automatically be allowed to do everything my parents do. I’ll just be taking a more active role.”

“You’re frowning again.”

He was.

Chara sighed, evidently trying to get comfortable in the throne that did, upon closer inspection, look forbiddingly uncomfortable. “Look, Ree. You need to talk to your parents about this.”

“No.” No, because that would be admitting failure, admitting to the people he wanted to impress most that he wasn’t up to the job they’d painstakingly been training him for. He couldn’t and wouldn’t let them down like that. He’d manage. He’d do it all somehow.

Chara sighed. “That’s what _I_ said when you recommended I go and discuss…that one issue with Toriel, but that turned out perfectly fine. Your parents are good people. You should trust them more.”

Asriel scowled at the floor, fidgeting. They’d had no reason to use guilt on him and they knew it. They were using the same tactics he’d used a few months earlier, to much better effect, after they’d realised they couldn’t abandon the values Faille had instilled in them. It hadn’t been a good couple of weeks, crowned with them attempting to run away from what they had memorably called the ‘undeserving, rotten-to-the-core monarchy’. It still echoed in his ears, sometimes, just like their eyes flashing in anger were always somewhere on his mind. They’d drawn a knife on him, briefly.

It hadn’t been a good couple of weeks at all.

Back in the present, they had clearly despaired of getting an answer from him, and they held a hand out, still lounging in the throne like they weren’t even slightly awed by it.

“If you don’t talk to them about it, it’s only going to get worse.”

He took their hand, holding it in his awkwardly. “No it’s not. I can handle it.”

“…if you say so. “

“You don’t believe me, do you?”

“Not a bit of it,” they replied cheerfully, tracing fingers down his palm a touch distractingly. “But let’s look at this logically: whatever happens, I’ll be here too, and while I have no delusions of being anything above tolerable at making important decisions, I can still try and help. I can study, and improve, and get to a position where I can help you. I don’t have to spend _all_ my days reading about fish.”

“Just some of them?”

“Let’s say two in five.”

“You’re so generous,” he smiled despite himself.

“I am,” they agreed, curling their fingers over his. “And because I’m so generous, I’ll help you forget all about pesky things like responsibility and duties and making difficult decisions.” The dramatic affectation left their voice as they looked up at him. “You’d far prefer to take orders, wouldn’t you?”

There was no way he could reasonably reply to that beyond appalled spluttering and he didn’t feel like spluttering, not tonight. He felt like kissing them, so he brought their hand to his lips and was rewarded by a smile that set his heart racing. He kissed along the veins running up to their knuckles, then down their fingers, and, because it was customary for them now, took their index and middle fingers in his mouth.

“Kneeling down might be more comfortable,” they suggested.

It was a sound argument, and he was finding it increasingly difficult to do anything other than what they’d like, so he knelt, putting himself just below their line of sight so they could look down at him. The dais was hard under his knees and their wrist was fragile in his hands, the blood pulsing under his pads as he sucked up their fingers and, slowly, pulled off. Orders were indeed easier. Rather than an onslaught of silent expectations, Chara wouldn’t fail to tell him what they wanted here, and then it was just a matter of swallowing his embarrassment and pleasing them. So he looked up at their face partially covered in shadow, holding their hand as one might hold a butterfly that had decided to perch on one’s palm, and waited.

Words weren’t always needed, which was something of a relief, because they had a filthy mouth when they wanted to use it, and he wasn’t sure that was what he wanted. Some nights, it was, but this was different. He just wanted to focus on them, not the overpowering weight of everything he should be doing, or everything he should be. So when they drew their hand back, putting both of their arms on the arm rests, and uncrossed their legs pointedly, he took the hint.

Moving until he was directly in front of them, his hands on their spread knees, he bent down to kiss the insides of their thighs through the thin cloth. A spasm went through them but they didn’t make a sound, so – taking courage – he moved to nuzzle between their legs, breathing against them and stroking hands along the undersides of their thighs. They shivered again, and he heard a hitch in their breath, but very little more than that. He’d had to become attuned to the slightness of their reactions. Feeling himself hardening uncomfortably, suppressing a needy sort of whine, he ran his tongue up them through the fabric, and they gasped.

He knew their eyes would still be on him, so he didn’t look up. He shuffled his thighs together, trying to get some friction to himself, and sat back on his feet.

Desperation and desire silenced any embarrassment he might have felt.

Their belt was easily undone despite the trembling of his hands, as were the laces that ran down to the seam between their thighs. He was intensely aware of being watched. It was disconcerting without being unpleasant, and he somehow managed to open their trousers without ripping anything except, perhaps, his own nerves. Without waiting for an obvious order, he bent his head and took their cock in his mouth. They, understandably, stiffened.

He had to give thanks for the difference in their sizes, as he had no need to use his hands: with only a little discomfort, he took them all in, until his nose brushed against the dark hair that ran up to their navel. They were breathing heavily, the air occasionally cracking into sound, and he could see how tense their fingers were on the arm rests. They only grew tenser when he curled his tongue around them, his own breath ragged against their skin. The heat rushing to his hips was intolerable and he brought his hand down to try and palm himself, but before he could, their fingers were on his horns, tilting his head up to meet their burning eyes.

Their smile was admirably restrained – lips slightly open – but their eyes were a whole other matter: they were so piercing he thought he might drown in them happily. They shook their head.

“I wouldn’t do that, _Your Highness_ ,” they said unsteadily, taking obvious delight in the title. “Don’t use your hands.”

He couldn’t say anything with them in his mouth, but no reply was expected, only obedience. So, straining with need, he fell into pleasuring them, doing as they liked, drinking in every one of their muffled gasps. He almost choked with relief when they moved their leg so he could grind against their foot. In return, he lowered his head, inviting them to hold onto his horns again. Their fingers were too tense for delicacy: there were none of the fluttering touches they would usually have lavished on him until he sobbed for more, only firm hands on his head, not quite pulling him forwards but getting very close to it.

It was depravity fit to offend every sensibility, to do this on a throne that should have been sacred. It was nothing he would have dared to do without them, but he knew they needed to act out against a system they couldn’t agree with, and he knew he needed to grant their every wish, as long as it kept them happy. He wasn’t a future king here – he was subservient in a way that shouldn’t be allowed, debased in a way that couldn’t be tolerated.

He was so happy.

They threw their head back and ran their fingers down to his cheeks, letting out a brief warning before coming, but he didn’t lift his head. He swallowed, growling almost mindlessly when their foot moved against him, bringing him to the edge and well over it. It was the providential combination of their sounds, their taste, the way they felt, and it was too much to take.

Gasping, he fell backwards, catching himself at the last moment only to push himself back onto his knees. His thighs were numb, but that was a hazard of the role. He was more interested in their face as they slowly came back to themself, slumped in a throne covered with furs, looking as glorious as he’d ever seen them. They opened their eyes, still panting, and sat up a little straighter to reach out and lift his chin with a finger. Asriel felt he’d do anything for them.

“Well, my prince?” they asked, just too tired to be smug. “Still worrying? As far as I can see, the only responsibility you have now is to take me back before I fall asleep. Or,” they said, eyes lighting up, “you can have an important decision instead: will I be fucking you tonight, or the other way round?”

“On the throne?” he asked, more than a little disbelieving.

“On the throne.”

He couldn’t help laughing, only partly from the sheer scandal of it, and he pressed his cheek against the hand they gave him. “Whichever you prefer, then.”

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [cloaked in sheepskin](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7474419) by [feralphoenix](https://archiveofourown.org/users/feralphoenix/pseuds/feralphoenix)




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